Title: The Lost Girls
Author: Heather Young
ISBN: 9780857308184
Publisher: Verve Books
Pages: 341
Source: ARC from NetGalley
A stunning novel that examines the price of loyalty, the burden of regret, the meaning of salvation, and the sacrifices we make for those we love, told in the voices of two unforgettable women linked by a decades-old family mystery at a picturesque lake house.
In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family—her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child.
Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability—a way to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning. The house is cold and dilapidated. The dark, silent lake is isolated and eerie. Her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more about the summer of 1935 than he’s telling.
Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives to steal her inheritance, and the man she left launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house haunted by the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.
Official Summary
Family, love and loyalty run deeps throughout this book. How much are we affected by our upbringing and our parents? How do our childhood experiences affect the path our adult lives follow? These are questions you will ask yourself once you have read this book. The Lost Girls is a heart-warming story that will bring a tear to your eye. By the end of the book, I was reminded how much I can be thankful for.
The depicts the story from two points of view; Justine in the present day who inherits a lake house from her aunt, and Lucy, an old lady reaching the end of her days and writing her family story in the form of a very long letter to Justine. Lucy last saw Justine when Justine was only nine years old.
Young uses these two women, related yet rather unknown to each other, to tell an extremely sad story that’s filled with love, loyalty and commitment between two very different sisters.
This book’s blurb appealed to me even if it is a little different to my normal genre of choice. Having grown up with brothers myself, I was quickly intrigued by these sisters and the relationship they shared. Each page left me amazed and I found myself dragged deep into the world of the Evans family, never a hundred percent certain where the story was headed.
There are a lot of amazing characters in this book – I find it very hard to pick a favourite.
Little Emily and her need for a relationship with her older sisters simply stole my heart, this little girl managed to stay with me even after finishing the book. She reminded me just a little bit of one of my daughters. Then there was Melanie, this troubled young girl had a lot going on. It’s not revealed immediately, but you just know there is more there. The author did a marvellous job with this young girl.
The Lost Girls is one of my few five-star reads so far this year and it easily sailed onto my Loved List for 2021. This story is deeply moving. Yep, no doubt about it – I Loved this book!
Women’s Fiction and Mystery fans will find this book very hard to put down. This is one of those stories that stays with you long after you have read the last page, regularly drifting back into your mind even after you have reached for your next read.
The Lost Girls is a brilliant story, told in a way that slowly reveals a family history filled with secrets you would never have foreseen. Heather Young created an amazingly moving story that you will find impossible to walk away from. This is a book you will want to share with your friends. Loved it!
Also by Heather Young:
The Distant Dead
A young boy finds himself at the centre of a murder mystery in this timely and twisty thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Lost Girls―a compelling and indelible story set in small-town America that examines the burden of guilt, the bitter price of forgiveness, and the debts we owe our dead, both recent and distant.
A body burns in the high desert hills. A boy walks into a fire station, pale with the shock of a grisly discovery. A middle school teacher worries when her colleague is late for work. By day’s end, when the body is identified as local math teacher Adam Merkel, a small Nevada town will be rocked to its core by a brutal and calculated murder.
Adam Merkel left a university professorship in Reno to teach middle school in Lovelock seven months before he died. A quiet, seemingly unremarkable man, he connected with just one of his students: Sal Prentiss, a lonely sixth-grader who lives with his uncles on a desolate ranch in the hills. The two outcasts developed a tender, trusting friendship that brought each of them hope in the wake of tragedy. But it is Sal who finds Adam’s body, charred almost beyond recognition, half a mile from his uncles’ compound.
Nora Wheaton, the middle school’s social studies teacher, dreamed of a life far from Lovelock only to be dragged back on the eve of her college graduation to care for her disabled father, a man she loves but can’t forgive. She sensed in the new math teacher a kindred spirit–another soul bound to Lovelock by guilt and duty. After Adam’s death, she delves into his past for clues to who killed him and finds a dark history she understands all too well. But the truth about his murder may lie closer to home. For Sal Prentiss’s grief seems heavily shaded with fear, and Nora suspects he knows more than he’s telling about how his favourite teacher died. As she tries to earn the wary boy’s trust, she finds he holds not only the key to Adam’s murder but an unexpected chance at the life she thought she’d lost.
Weaving together the last months of Adam’s life, Nora’s search for answers, and a young boy’s anguished moral reckoning, this unforgettable thriller brings a small American town to vivid life, filled with complex, flawed characters wrestling with the weight of the past, the promise of the future, and the bitter freedom that forgiveness can bring.
About the Author
Bio from Author’s site
Heather is the author of two novels. Her debut, The Lost Girls, won the Strand Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The Distant Dead was published on June 9, 2020. It was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel and named one of the ten best mystery and suspense books of the year by Book Page. A former litigator, Heather traded the legal world for the literary one and earned her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2011. She was also awarded a Fellowship by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and is an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Writers’ Workshop and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop. She lives in Mill Valley, California, where she writes, bikes, hikes and reads books by other people that she wishes she’s written.
What a brilliant read – thank you NetGalley and Verve Books, for this amazing book! I loved every minute. If you haven’t yet, be sure to add this book to your TBR – I have already added The Distant Dead to my TBR – I cannot wait to read more of Heather Young’s work. Have you read this book? Share your thoughts, leave a comment below. Thank you for taking the time to read my review, until next time… Happy Reading!
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I do love a good book set next to a lake. I don’t know why! This one sounds like a lovely read, glad you loved it!
It really was a great read!