A review by kati_craig
The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

4.0

This historical fiction offers the dual perspectives of a recently freed enslaved woman and a teacher who ends up in the same small town almost 100 years later. This book was a little slow to get into, but I was interested enough to see what became of Hannie to carry on. The author had a tendency to end a chapter on a bit of a cliff hanger before switching narrators. Then, when we returned to the former narrator, she had advanced the story, then backtracked. In a book that, while interesting, was a bit of a slower read, and especially when read on a kindle where I couldn’t easily physically flip back to remember what had happened, it frustrated me. I also found the opposition our 1980s teacher encounters to be contrived and under developed. The inclusion of the actual classified ads for “lost friends” was sobering and deeply felt.