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A review by adelayedteacher
The Luster of Lost Things by Sophie Chen Keller
3.0
This is a great book. Until it gets lost in itself.
Our lead character is brilliantly written. You get to live in his head and wander around the world with him and it feels like a real living breathing person in his situation. I adored him. His father went missing years ago in a plane crash that was never found and his mother started a bake shop (the backstory on that is one of the greatest moments in this novel - so well done) and is now very successful.
He searches for lost things. And, again, it's so well done you can imagine in your head as he goes from finding thing to thing - it so heartwarming and genuine you can't help but love his heart. But then the book from the shop (part of the backstory) goes missing and we've got our plot.
Let me say this - up until this point it's a great story, with great possibilities and I was very excited to see where it went. Then it went. And went. And went. As a writer - I understand what may have happened. With such a great foundation in character, place, and plot - why not craft a longer novel with plenty of meat in the middle? As a reader, however, I did not enjoy slogging through several points, places, and characters that felt as if they were forced into the moment - round peg in a square hole. It doesn't help that the missing book has seven pages and throughout the adventure they go missing at least twice. We're treated to rich descriptions of setting, of people, and of the conflict - but it begets a feeling of too much.
The way the story ends is predictable in some ways - everyone he meets returns to the shop and we get a somewhat satisfactory ending on his dad's story but it feels like it could have been so much more. As a reader, we spent lots of time on people and places that at the end don't seem to carry the weight that the people and places in the opening chapters did.
Our lead character is brilliantly written. You get to live in his head and wander around the world with him and it feels like a real living breathing person in his situation. I adored him. His father went missing years ago in a plane crash that was never found and his mother started a bake shop (the backstory on that is one of the greatest moments in this novel - so well done) and is now very successful.
He searches for lost things. And, again, it's so well done you can imagine in your head as he goes from finding thing to thing - it so heartwarming and genuine you can't help but love his heart. But then the book from the shop (part of the backstory) goes missing and we've got our plot.
Let me say this - up until this point it's a great story, with great possibilities and I was very excited to see where it went. Then it went. And went. And went. As a writer - I understand what may have happened. With such a great foundation in character, place, and plot - why not craft a longer novel with plenty of meat in the middle? As a reader, however, I did not enjoy slogging through several points, places, and characters that felt as if they were forced into the moment - round peg in a square hole. It doesn't help that the missing book has seven pages and throughout the adventure they go missing at least twice. We're treated to rich descriptions of setting, of people, and of the conflict - but it begets a feeling of too much.
The way the story ends is predictable in some ways - everyone he meets returns to the shop and we get a somewhat satisfactory ending on his dad's story but it feels like it could have been so much more. As a reader, we spent lots of time on people and places that at the end don't seem to carry the weight that the people and places in the opening chapters did.