Reviews with content warning for Terminal illness - The Book of Lost Things

I enjoyed the imagery and the writing style. The fairy tale vibes gone darker were quite well done. I didn't particularly care about the main character but the plot itself followed a path that made sense for a "fairy tale" type story, and these stories normally don't have main characters that are that complex and well developed anyways.
I really liked how dark the fairy tale retellings were and it was nice to see the main character's relationships with other people develop as he "grew up". The depiction of grief and overall of negative emotions in the eyes of the main character was also fascinating.
Overall a cool book, a great choice if you're into fairy tales and spooky stuff.

Content Warnings

booksploration's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

The Book of Lost Things is a dark and twisted story about loss, grief, and growing up. Regardless of its playful cover and the age of the main character, it’s not a children’s book.

Here’s a short description (taken from another edition): "Taking refuge in fairy tales after the loss of his mother, twelve-year-old David finds himself violently propelled into an imaginary land in which the boundaries of fantasy and reality are disturbingly melded."

I find the premise of the book exciting, the cover is beautiful, the author’s love for books shines through the story, and he manages to convey the complex feelings of grief well.

Despite all of this, I didn’t enjoy the book. "Disturbingly melded" summarises my overall impression (after reading the whole book) pretty accurately.

A few examples:

Blood and gore - I enjoy a good horror story and am not against scenes of graphic violence in general. However, I think the author sometimes overdid it a little in a way that didn't add to the story, especially since it’s about the adventures of a 12-year-old boy.

Paedophilia and the way in which it is addressed - In other parts of the book, the author described scenes of violence VERY graphically, but on page 47, he used a horrible "euphemism" to talk about the heinous crimes of a child molester:

"Now, in another bedroom, he thought of Jonathan Tulvey and Anna, and wondered if a man from a clean little house, a man who lived with his mother and kept sweets in his pockets, had made them go down with him to the railway tracks. And there, in the darkness, he had played with them, in his way." I’m glad that Connolly didn't go into more detail here, but the choice of words ("played") seems VERY unfortunate.

Homophobia - I’m aware that David is "only" a child, but the same doesn’t hold true for the author who chose to write this:

"David was being dragged along on a quest for a man whom he had never met, a man for whom only Roland had feelings, and those feelings, if the Crooked Man was to be believed, were not natural. There were names for men like Roland where David came from. They were among the worst names that a man could be called. David had always been warned to keep away from such people, and now here he was keeping company with one of them in a strange land." (p. 237)

And there's so much to unpack here:

"A bedchamber contained a naked woman and a naked man, and the Crooked Man would bring children to them (not the special ones, the ones who gave him life, but the others, the ones he stole from villages or those who strayed from the path and became lost in the forest) and the man and the woman would whisper things to them in the darkness of their chamber, telling them things that children should not know, dark tales of what adults did together in the depths of the night while their sons and daughters were sleeping. In this way the children died inside. Forced into adulthood before they were ready, they had their innocence taken from them and their minds collapsed under the weight of poisonous thoughts. Some grew up to become evil men and women, and so the corruption was spread." (pp. 304-305)

Content Warnings

kestrel's review

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

nerdyllamas's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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