The Lost Story

 By: Meg Shaffer

Location: FIC SHA

Genre: Fantasy

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." - C.S. Lewis

Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.

Mary Beth- review

In West Virginia, Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing and vanished during an end of school field trip to Red Crow State Forest. They were gone long enough that people had stopped referring them as missing and now called them lost. They mysteriously reappeared six months later. They were in perfect health. They were taller, stronger with bright eyes and clear skin. How did they survive?

Fifteen years later Jeremy becomes a missing persons investigator and Rafe is a reclusive artist who lives in a cabin in the woods. He has scars inside and out and can't remember how he got them.

This book was such a delight!



The world where this book took me to was just amazing. It was so beautiful! Here is a sneak peak of the description of the Painted Sea. The shore off Painted Sea was swirled with colors, like a child had spilled their jar of rainbow sand everywhere. Pinks and Blues and Greens and Purples. The water was so clear that you could see through it like a window. Small Silver Dolphins and lazy rays played in the surf.

The trees in this world soared a thousand feet too tall. The trunks a hundred feet. These trees had leaves every color of Easter, pink and green and blue and yellow and white. They looked like the trees you might have scribbled as a child with fat Crayola markers to color one tree. Yes, these were a child's imaginary trees made real somehow.

This book was inspired by C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. This amazing novel is an adult fairytale. I loved her book, The Wishing Game and I loved this one even more. It was my favorite adult fairytale. I loved all the characters. They all were well done.