The Lost Girls

A haunting debut 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 beautiful, decaying lake house.

In the summer of 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys her mother, who spends the rest of her life at the lake house, hoping in vain that her favorite daughter will walk out of the woods. Emily’s two older sisters stay, too, each keeping her own private, decades-long vigil for the lost child.

Sixty years later Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before she dies, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person to whom it might matter: her grandniece, Justine.

For Justine, the lake house offers a chance to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the stable home she never had. But it’s not the sanctuary she hoped for. The long Minnesota winter has begun. The house is cold and dilapidated, the frozen lake is silent and forbidding, and her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more than he’s telling about the summer of 1935.

Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives with designs on her inheritance, and the man she left behind launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house steeped in the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.


My Review

Overall, I found this book to be an pretty good debut novel by author, Heather Young. Although, I really thought this book was going to have more of a haunting effect. Yet, I was drawn to the Evans family. Having Lucy's and Justine's voices in the alternating chapters was nice. This was I was drawn to them and it made their voices stronger than just reading the book. Although, I was more drawn to the past and Lucy than with Justine. Either way, after a while I found it to be a bit of a struggle some to keep with the book. I really wanted to know what had happened to Emily and it felt like forever before the truth was revealed. Yet, I liked the innocence of Lucy and her sisters and how one dark secret changed them all forever.

Comments

Mystica said…
This is one I'd like to be able to track down.
July 26, 2016 at 11:08 PM
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