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Kira remembers the time she survived on her own as a child in the woods, finding food and evading predators, though she doesn’t remember anything beforehand. Those primal feelings, those instincts that kept her alive, are still a big part of her even a decade later, since being found and adopted by Cady Bennett, who trains search-and-rescue dogs. Cady and her son, Jude, have helped Kira adapt to life and civilization and still help her to interact with others appropriately, to breathe through situations that incite flashbacks of the harrowing time of her young life, and to find her way. Their neighbor Free also is an important part of Kira’s life while not officially family; Free and Jude and Kira are a team in learning the business of search and rescue and training the dogs they work with. For that matter, the dogs are just as much a vital part of Kira’s life as the humans.
Kira and Jude are surprised when the grandfather they didn’t know existed, Bales Bennett, finds Cady and asks her to help find a missing girl in a national park adjacent to the town he lives in. The group heads off to participate in the search for the girl in a huge area of wilderness, dogs in tow. Even though Kira has trained for this kind of a hunt, she finds herself having more and more flashbacks to the time she was a little girl alone in the wilderness, and now she’s getting bits of memories about why she was in the woods. Not only that, but she, Jude and Free observe soon after their arrival that Cady has been keeping plenty of secrets about her history.
As the search for the little girl drags on, it is clear there is more going on than just a simple case of a child wandering away from her campsite. The three friends learn that this isn’t the first person to go missing under strange circumstances in the area in recent months. As they ask around town to learn more about the case, they also ask about Cady’s father and the friends she spent time with in an effort to piece together a picture that long was just a blank canvas to them.
At the same time, Kira finds herself nearly incapacitated by the memories that are surfacing; does she even want to remember what her own mind has kept hidden for so long? Is she destined to just be “that wild girl” who just lived by her instincts? Can she prove herself?
The Lovely and the Lost is a story of the love and support of family, of one teen figuring out who she is and what her place in the world is. It’s a mystery and a bit of a thriller, and it held my interest the whole way, as it revealed bit by bit the answers to the questions it presented throughout. I had read Barnes’ The Naturals and enjoyed that, and this had a similar feel. Entertaining but also a sweet book about love and being loved.
Rated: Mild. There is no offensive language; there is no sexual content. There are some scenes of peril and potential violence. There are references to child abuse but little in the way of detail.
*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
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