I had read Meg Shaffer’s debut The Wishing Game last year and absolutely adored it. That story was an imaginative, bookish take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that was both charming and endearing. This time around, with The Lost Story, Shaffer takes her inspiration from another children’s classic, The Chronicles of Narnia, while also paying tribute to fairy tales and the world of make-believe in the process.
In all honesty, I don’t have words to describe how I felt reading this beautifully written story – one that drew me in from the very first page and I never wanted to end. This was such a fun, delightful, charming story – truly a fairytale in every way, from its structure (with its storyteller who begins the story with “once upon a time” and ends it with “happily ever after”) to its magical, make-believe world consisting of castles and unicorns, heroes and heroines, knights in shining armor, villains that disappear and reappear in puffs of smoke, animals with the intelligence of humans, huge thousand feet trees with leaves in every color of the rainbow, etc. – yet on the other hand, this was also a very “adult” story that dealt with some very real and difficult issues (such as abuse, discrimination, bullying, for example). Just like in a fairy tale, there was a deeply profound and meaningful moral lesson buried underneath the fantastical elements, but everything blended together so seamlessly that, at times, it was easy to get lost in the tale itself. There was so much to love with this one: the characters were wonderfully-rendered and I actually loved all of them (Rafe, Jeremy, Emilie, Skya, as well as all the supporting characters) from the moment I met them within the first few pages, but I especially loved the way the characters interacted with each other; the descriptions of both the real and fantasy worlds were breathtaking and so well done that I definitely felt like I was completely immersed in a different time and place; the humor was also wonderfully done and there were so many scenes that had me laughing so hard, I started getting stomach cramps; most important of all however, was the underlying “lost and found” storyline (especially the one involving Rafe and Jeremy) that was both powerful and moving.
This was no doubt an emotional read for me – a roller coaster ride that had me laughing one minute and crying the next. At the same time, I also couldn’t help feeling a bit nostalgic and wistful due to all the memories that this brought back from my childhood – as an avid reader, I of course read everything I could get my hands on, but I especially loved fairy tales. One of my favorite books growing up was a special hardbound edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that I had read so much that it eventually fell apart to the point that I was forced to get rid of it (which still pains me when I think about it even now). The fact that I essentially stopped reading fairy tales after that incident (plus my reading tastes after I became an adult were markedly different from what I used to read as a child), made the nostalgia feel even more poignant. Getting the chance to revisit this aspect of my childhood through Shaffer’s story was definitely a welcome escape from all the craziness that has been a part of my life in recent months.
I don’t want to say much more about this book because revealing too many details would spoil the magic. If you loved Shaffer’s debut The Wishing Game as much as I did, definitely pick up this sophomore novel of hers – it’s written in the same vein, yet also vastly different in many aspects. Even though I ended up loving this one just a tad bit more, both are amazing reads that I highly, highly recommend!
Received ARC from Ballantine Books via NetGalley.
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