A review by jcstokes95
The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The Lost Year is really what I hope for all middle grade fiction to be. Namely, it treats the young reader with intelligence and knows that they will keep up with the history. It trusts young people to hold difficult stories while teaching them how to move through them. This is what you should be giving your child, your students, yourself, to read. 

In it, we follow multiple perspectives, across generations and continents, but all young people. Mila in Kyiv, living a charmed life with little knowledge of pain raging outside. Helen, a young immigrant in Brooklyn, passionate about telling the truth of the Holodomor in Ukraine. And Matthew, in the modern day, learning his family history with his GG while stuck inside during the pandemic. It weaves together everything so beautifully. The writing is gorgeous and evocative while still keeping you in the perspective of a child understanding a tough world for the first time. 

Unbelievably, this book pulls off something truly shocking in the second act that I did not register was going to happen at all. This further exposed just how much Marsh is playing 4D chess; she makes everything work effortlessly. I actually screamed when the thing becomes the thing. This book makes me feel so much, and I highly recommend as some of the best middle grade out there. I cannot wait to pick up her other books.