Review: Lost and Found

It’s been quite a while since I read anything fiction. I love fiction, but recently all my reading has been about how to get kids to listen, or how to understand teenagers [I've still got a lot of reading to do on that one] or how to design your very own website with just a little CSS and XHTML [as if I have time to design my very own website]. So when I found out Mother Talk’s latest blog tour is a fiction book about a reality show it was like they were calling out to me to break down and make some time for some fiction. And I’m so glad I did.

Lost and Found is Carolyn Parkhurst’s second book and it sure makes me want to go read the first. She’s a fantastic writer. The story was intriguing and the characters were so captivating I read the whole book in one day.

The characters are in the midst of filming a reality show, but even if you aren’t a reality TV fanatic you’ll enjoy this book. Reminiscent of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Parkhurst shifts the point of view between several different characters, each with their own unique reaction to the scavenger hunt television show they are participating in and their own feelings about the other contestants they are competing against. Parkhurst does a phenomenal job of allow the reader to identify with each character. As I read I felt like I could completely understand why each character did what they did and made the choices they made. I could feel their apprehension as they opened up to their teammates and their pain as their secrets were revealed.

The main characters are a mother and teenage daughter team who are overcoming a big obstacle in their relationship. The mother, Laura, is trying desperately to reconnect with her daughter, Cassie, and seems to be failing miserably. I think any mother of a teenager can relate to their back and forth of mom trying to talk to daughter and daughter just rolling her eyes at how uncool mom is. But Parkhurst takes this relationship further and lets us look through the eyes of each character to really understand the emotions behind these characters.

There is also an ex-gay married couple; Abby and Justin. They met when they both decided to turn away from their sinful lifestyles and seek help through a program called Redemption. There they learned to lean on God to follow a heterosexual lifestyle instead of a gay lifestyle. But throughout the book they are both dealing with temptations and how to overcome those temptations. I love Abby and Justin; almost more than Laura and Cassie. The conflict both these characters feel in their hearts and in their marriage and in just about every decision they made, sucked me in. I found myself rooting for them and then feeling sorry for them when they couldn’t be true to themselves.

But it doesn’t stop there. There are more [minor] characters and even a little love story for us romantics at heart.

Reading the development of these characters left me jealous of Parkhurst’s writing style. And the plot flowed so smoothly you have no idea you’ve just read almost 300 pages. This is an exceptional book about human relationships and I highly recommend it.

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