A review by katymul
Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

4.75

Rating the pace of this book felt like a cruel irony, for reasons it would be spoilers to explain.

This book captures the cruel magic of the Wayward Children series -- a world appearing with echoes of the very trauma the child is fleeing, take its price invisibly and visibly at once, somehow in perfect balance.

I appreciated the warnings about the child abuse in the story at the start, including the assurance that the protagonist would flee toward the beginning of abuse cycle. Unfortunately, however, into a different abuse cycle that while less common and thus triggering is just as permanently scarring. The fact that the two caretakers are better at putting a genial face on their casual cruelty and exploitation...that they seem to on some level actually believe their bullshit justifications...

A horror story with a fairy tale feel, like the best of the Wayward Children series.