Meg Shaffer

DNF at 80%. I feel gross listening to any more of this. At first the age fetish hints were subtle but they really ramped up in the second half. It was the reveal of a past trauma for our MC that finally convinced me I should’ve DNF’d back around the 10% mark when those feelings started.

Lucy is obsessed with a 9-year-old, and wants to be his mother. She is 26. She was intensely attracted to a 21-year-old artist when she was 13. She was even more attracted to said artist when they met show more again 13 years later. That now-34-year-old didn’t find it weird that he was amicably attracted to the no-longer-13-year-old. Lucy’s ex-boyfriend was her college professor. And there’s SA discussed with minor characters… who are also minors.

Actual quotes from this dumpster fire:
“Guess I’m just a big kid…” [said flirtatiously]
“Sorry that [moan] was a little pornographic…” [said after a spoonful of soup]
“No! You look *good* ‘bizarre’ [without your glasses]. Like, really young.”

Just watch Willy Wonka. Or read Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. Both are far superior works surrounding adults making a game surrounding kids that isn’t disgusting. And one of the adults was clearly disposing of the losers along the way. show less

THE LOST STORY was a magical experience. It is the story of two boys lost in a forest in West Virginia on an end-of-the-year field trip who come walking out six months after they disappeared. Rafe becomes an artist who doesn't remember what happened while he was lost in the woods. Jeremy becomes a man filled with secrets who has a talent for finding girls who are lost in the woods.

Fifteen years after their reappearance, Emilie Wendell comes to find Jeremy to ask him to look for the sister show more she didn't know she had until after her mother's death and who disappeared in the same forest where Rafe and Jeremy disappeared. Jeremy hasn't seen Rafe since they walked out of the forest, but now he needs him if the search for Emilie's sister is to be successful.

This story tells what happened when they all return to the Red Crow forest. It is filled with magic and romance and all the elements of a good fairy tale: heroes and villains, a lost princess, a magician and a storyteller to provide insights.

I thought this story was amazing. It will certainly go on my keeper shelf when it was released. The characters were well-drawn and interesting people. The language was both down to earth and lyrical. show less

I'm not surprised that some readers love this book. However, I am surprised at the lack of critical reviews. For some, this book may be triggering. I DNF'ed at 25% in and had BIG FEELINGS.

Lucy's motivation for entering and winning the Willy Wonka-esque competition the plot revolves around is to get the money she needs to adopt a 7 YO boy and "save" him from the foster care family he's been placed with.

She carries the scars of emotional trauma and neglect from her own childhood and is now a show more kindergarten aide and part-time tutor. She has fixated on this particular child and has told him his greatest "wish" is to be his mother as soon as she's saved enough to cover the adoption fee. Never mind that she lacks income stability, housing, and general readiness to be the primary caretaker of a child.

Lucy fervently believes that 'no one could love him like she can,' and worries that her window of opportunity to "save him" is closing. This is despite that the child is placed with "one of the best foster families." He has stability, food, shelter, is encouraged to do his homework, and has made huge developmental strides in school and beyond. Those kind of families are GOLD in the foster care system, but that's not good enough for Lucy, despite the fact that she has never had the responsibility for caring for anyone but herself.

The plot hinges on Lucy being likable and well-intentioned. But there's another interpretation of her: from a distance, she's judged the foster family as unworthy and is convinced she knows better what the child needs. She is inappropriately attached to the child (borderline grooming) and projects her own emotional needs onto him. She would benefit from therapy to work through her past, not to mention, you know, maybe getting some practice parenting or fostering prior to jumping into adoption?

Not to say there aren't real issues with foster care or adoption, but this book gets a lot of things wrong including insinuating that money makes for happy endings to unhappy childhoods. Hard pass. show less

Lucy is a kindergarten teacher's assistant who is desperate to adopt a traumatized little boy, if only she could afford to do it. Then she gets an invitation to a game being held on the private island of her favorite children's book author, featuring a prize that could make all her dreams come true.

This sort of seemed like it should be up my alley, as someone who very much appreciates the spell woven by the books we love as kids and the effect they can have on our lives. But, well... I am show more absolutely certain that this one will be someone's ideal feel-good read, but I'm afraid I can't say it's mine. It's a bit hard to say why. The only way I can think of to put it is that, even while I was reading, it never seemed true. Everything about it: the characters' various sad backstories, the sweet little kid, the blossoming romance, the writer's bits of verbal whimsey, it all just felt so carefully, conspicuously crafted to evoke the right kind of sentiment that it got in the way of me actually feeling the right kind of sentiment. I also just can't quite sink into the wish-fulfillment fantasy of an eccentric but lovable rich person swooping in to solve one's problems, being far too keenly aware of how much that doesn't happen in reality. It might be appropriate that I read this over Christmas, because I can't help feeling that the novel reminds me of nothing quite so much as a Hallmark Channel movie. At least, I think it does. I haven't actually watched those much, because they're really not my kind of thing.

Which isn't to say it was bad, really. There were things about it I appreciated. The ending is predictable enough, but it manages to avoid feeling too cliche in the process of getting there. I really like the fact that the romance subplot wasn't forced or speedrun, which I fully expected it to be. And even my apparently cold, dead heart responded a bit to the themes of found-family parental love. Still, overall, it wasn't really what I was hoping for. show less