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A review by ccrutcher
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
3.0
2.5/5 stars. Sweet and intriguing premise to start, but falls short.
The beginning of the story with the missing boys and the insinuation of this "other place" they were lost in during their absence hooked me immediately and I was brimming with excitement for this mysterious world they might return to, but then...the pacing started to go awry, the world-building was a flop, and the dialogue became far too forced.
3 stars because I genuinely loved the reimagining of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (one of my favorite books as a kid), and the relationship between 2 of the 3 main characters was adorable, but the book had such lofty goals and it misses them completely.
! Potential spoilers below !
There's not enough description or whimsy to make sense of why they were randomly made a knight and a king? There's not enough background on the world they enter - from its history, its species, its landscapes - to make the reader want to live there? I felt like I was being told where they were, instead of shown. It's the magnificent world building that makes someone want to go to Narnia or Hogwarts. The books falls really flat here and is the main reason I hovered between 2-3 stars.
Overall - I can see what the author wanted to achieve and there were a few lines that tugged at the heart strings, but it didn't quite work for me.
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
The beginning of the story with the missing boys and the insinuation of this "other place" they were lost in during their absence hooked me immediately and I was brimming with excitement for this mysterious world they might return to, but then...the pacing started to go awry, the world-building was a flop, and the dialogue became far too forced.
3 stars because I genuinely loved the reimagining of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (one of my favorite books as a kid), and the relationship between 2 of the 3 main characters was adorable, but the book had such lofty goals and it misses them completely.
! Potential spoilers below !
There's not enough description or whimsy to make sense of why they were randomly made a knight and a king? There's not enough background on the world they enter - from its history, its species, its landscapes - to make the reader want to live there? I felt like I was being told where they were, instead of shown. It's the magnificent world building that makes someone want to go to Narnia or Hogwarts. The books falls really flat here and is the main reason I hovered between 2-3 stars.
Overall - I can see what the author wanted to achieve and there were a few lines that tugged at the heart strings, but it didn't quite work for me.
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.