The lovely and the lost by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

As a fan of The inheritance games series, I eagerly picked up The lovely and the lost, a psychological thriller featuring Kira, a teen who had been rescued as a child from the wild by Cady Bennett. Adopted by Cady, she and Cady’s son Jude, and neighbour Free, are all being trained to handle search-and-rescue dogs. When Cady is called by her estranged father, Bales Bennett, to locate a missing child in the Sierra glades National Park, the three teens accompany her in the search for Bella, the little girl. Kira becomes increasingly obsessed with finding her as flashbacks to her own survival in the forest become more frequent.

The story is told in Kira’s voice and it is easy to become totally immersed in this tense story as Kira begins to remember haunting scenes from her desperate fight to stay alive as a child in the forest. She knows what Bella could be experiencing but is frustrated when the search turns from seeking a missing child to trying to find the person who has kidnapped her and the teens are prohibited from searching because of their age. Together with Gabriel, a troubled teenager living with Cady’s father, they begin to research the people who have disappeared in the forest, and Kira is dismayed to uncover family secrets that have been hidden by Cady.

Dog lovers will be thrilled with the descriptions of how search and rescue dogs behave and how important they are in finding missing people. The dogs all have personalities of their own and help to manage Kira’s behaviour when she is overcome by memories of her childhood trauma.

This is a compelling story with Barnes unpeeling the secrets of Kira’s past, uncovering family secrets, while at the same time maintaining the reader’s fear for the little lost child. The conclusion has a surprising and unexpected twist. Lovers of psychological thrillers and dogs will be sure to enjoy The lovely and the lost and may enjoy The woods are always watching by Stephanie Perkins, Be not far from me by Mindy McGinnis and Nowhere on earth by Nick Lake.

Themes: Missing persons, Rescue work, Survival, Psychological thriller.

Pat Pledger