Review: The Lost and Found Girl

The Lost and Found Girl by Maisey Yates
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

But it is said in the town of Pear Blossom that Ruby McKee herself is miraculous. 

After completing her college studying abroad, Ruby McKee comes back to her hometown of Pear Blossom, Oregon after she's offered a job by Dana who works at the historical society. Ruby has always felt a connection to Dana, the single mom who's fifteen year old daughter Caitlin went missing and was never found. Ten months after Caitlin went missing, Ruby was found at an old bridge, near where Caitlin was last seen, as a baby by the McKee sisters. The town still hurting and reeling from Caitlin's disappearance made Ruby into their miracle baby and the McKee family adopted her. Now twenty-two years later, Ruby is back home and along with her sisters, Marianne, Lydia, and Dahlia, they're having to confront what their life stories say about them and what they want them to say. 

“Of course, my first thought was to blame her. But that's what we do. It's what we do.” 

“What is?” 

Dana looked her square in the face. “We blame the mother.” 

The Lost and Found Girl gave us a look into all four sister's lives, with all the personal and familial issues that come with sisterhood, some romance for them all, and a cold case mystery wallpapering the background. Ruby had a tad more of a lead in the story as her being found by the sisters and how that subsequently changed the dynamic in the family and her being found and treated as a healing balm to the disappearance of Caitlin. Through all the sister's povs we learn that Marianne went through some depression as a teenager which is having her struggle with her own teenage daughter and her new worries that her husband is cheating on her, Lydia's husband died a few months ago and she's struggling with everyone treating her like she should constantly be falling apart while holding in the secret that she wanted to divorce her husband before his sickness and newly recognizing her attraction to Chase, who was her husband's bestfriend, Dahlia is dealing with always feeling second fiddle to Ruby because she was the baby of the family before Ruby and being scared to go for what she wants, like being attracted to the Chief of police Carter, and then Ruby who is still searching for answers to who she is and being drawn to the town black sheep, Nathan, who was Caitlin's boyfriend at the time of the disappearance and who everyone thinks murdered her. 

She'd always wanted the answers while had seemed like the people around her preferred stories.” 

When Ruby comes to town, she and Dahlia, who has a new job as a journalist at the local paper, decide to work together to write articles and make displays of retrospectives of the town's history, which requires interviewing, highlighting, and drudging up the past. It may seem like a lot of plot threads and characters to keep up with but the constant changing povs between the sisters keeps the trains going on each of their tracks. The cold case is an important part of the fabric of the story but it's definitely more of the wallpaper that I called it earlier, until more towards the ending when it pops up and gets the focus that readers could probably feel on the back of their necks. With everything the sisters are going through, it does feel like they could have had their own books, this reads like broken up novellas sewn together, but there was also the feeling of connectivity between their stories that makes putting them together all in one book still work. The essence of the story was really focused on stories, the ones we tell ourselves and the ones people tell about us, which worked with these characters and plot but it was rinse and repeated so much between all four sisters that the repetitiveness of this started to bog the pace and story down for me in the second half; the sisters all had different bemoaning personal issues but reading bemoaning issues over and over in the same book was a lot. I felt like this really hit Ruby's character, so much “I'm the golden, make everyone happy child”, which I get how it plays into her known abandonment as a baby, but, ooof, is this “stories” reiterated and bemoaned/struggled with repetitively. Individually, it works for the character but collectively in the book, repetitive. 

Not knowing could drive you crazy. 

Knowing is probably a burden sometimes too. 

Each sister does have her own little romance arc but there wasn't a lot of room for the men to make huge character showings but my romance loving heart appreciated the additive. Like I said, most of the story is the sisters struggling with emotional issues and what they want their stories to be, so it's not until around 70% we get a bigger hit on the cold case of Caitlin and then a reveal comes at 80% to bring it to the focus in a big way. I didn't see the reveal coming, so it was a definite shock to me and if you also want to be shocked, don't read the spoiler but if trigger warnings are something you like to know ***SPOILER***Marianne was raped and abused by a townsperson, she ended up pregnant and secretly birthed a baby, that baby was Ruby. Marianne's rapist also abused Caitlin and was responsible for her murder. Marianne blocked it all out in her mind and the trauma slowly makes the way to the forefront of her memories.***END SPOILER***

The last fifteen percent felt a bit rushed with it's traumatic feelings and I would have liked a fuller and sat with a little longer resolution. Overall, this was a well written little bit different constructed story that melded a couple genres together. The second half slowed some with the sisters repeatedly struggling with how they were living their lives, instead of finally just changing it, I can sit with one character doing this but four got wearying. However, each sister was compelling in their own right, I enjoyed the romance, and was locked in wondering about Caitlin's disappearance. If you're looking for some women's fiction that has a different feel to it, I would definitely recommend The Lost and Found Girl.

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