Lost Girl: A Novel, Lost Boy

There are certain writers I always look forward to their next work. Mr. Straub has never disappointed me. This novel is much shorter then his pass efforts but this is due to the fact that it was exceptionally edited where not one word is wasted. The way the story shift viewpoints from character to character using both first and third person perspectives is very well done. The story line move shiftly and the conclusion ties up all the loose ends, as well as leaving us a little unsure of Mark Underhill's fate.

This book had all the ingrediants for a great read. Horror, suspense,and love. When I first opened the book, I thought O.K. I am only going to be able to read the first chapter, and be able to put it down pretty easy. But to my surprise I was wrong. As I read on I felt like I was being pulled into the small town of Millhaven. It felt like I was a visitor going to each location and actually watching the whole thing play out in front of me. Most books do not grab my attention like that. So, I do consider this book an awesome find. It was definately one of those books that you just can't put down. Which led to many late nights. I can't wait to read more of Peter Straub's books.

I consider myself to be a pretty openmided reader, and so I got this book and started it with an open mind however.... you would have to have a mind as open as the grand canyon to follow the circles and turns that this book takes you in. After drudging through it... and working past the fact that no one even cared about his dead mom, whose life was so boring, and sad, and left unexplored. I mean why did the ghost girl appear to her,as a young tattered little girl, but appear to her son as a hot dead chick... which by the way is still considered incest in some states I think. I thought I was finally getting somewhere about the middle of the book...only to learn that there was no climax and that my young protagonist, Mark, had disappeared to an unknown island with his ghostly second cousin.... that had seduced him to another realm? There was no real explaination... there was no satisfaction for his annoying dad... and his "Unc Tim" kept getting cryptic emails that somehow satisfied him? All I could say was "What the hell did I just read?"

I wanted to like it... but you can't like something that you can't follow..... at the end I was lost too!

I did not really enjoy his writing style, something was missing for me. Another problem for me was that the book was all over the place. I was busy trying to figure out where I was, what did I miss and where was he headed, he jumped all over the place. The ending wasn't that great either.

I'm going to try Ghost Story, hopefully I will enjoy that more. If not, I don't think I will read anything else by this author.

While Lost Boy Lost Girl contains some flashbacks to Ghost Story and ShadowLand, it fails to develop to anything like the sustained complexity of Peter Straub's early books.Its far too short, it contains too many anomalies (first a terrifying 6 year old phantom girl, then a loving 19 year old teenager, why did the mother really kill herself ?). Frankly, I didn't find much mystery, terror or horror - pity, the idea was good but the execution was lacking - another few months of effort and the writer might have come up with something really good.

I am an extremely devoted Stephen King fan, always have been,he has wrote two wonderful books with Peter Straub, so on a whim I picked this solitary work of Straub's up at the book store and decided to see how his writing is without King on board.

I must say I was sadly disappointed, I have heard Straub described as a brilliant writer and have seen reviews of his past work and reviews of this book and it seemed like a safe bet that this would be a good read. It was not, there was no consistency to the storyline, no true character building except for Uncle Tim and Mark the nephew, one of them goes missing, we THINK, we don't even know when we shut the book if he is missing or not.

A boy's mother dies when he is 15 and he cries a couple tears only seen by his friend then becomes "one" with his dead third cousin and decides an afterlife of sex on beaches is a better existance than the one he has. This cousin supposedly died at approximately age 6, but is 19 when encountering the boy in the book and using a different name to woo him. The Uncle wishes him well and is happy his nephew is dead and off cavorting with cadavers, and critics acclaim this as Straub's best work to date? I have no urge to read anything else the man has wrote if this is the best he can do.

I agree with those who say King's work can be too long winded, a lot of details can confuse and even annoy a person when they want a story to move forward. When a character opens a door we want to know what is behind it, not 5 pages of ramblings about his past and other doors he has opened and then a cut scene to someone else in the book and what they are doing. King tends to force us on those long evasive journeys, yet I would curl up any night with a King book even one I have read 10 other times as opposed to this incoherent psychotic rambling that Straub produced. There is no depth to this work, depth would have meant straying past 323 pages, hardly as long as a pre-teen novel. There is really very little character development, besides as I cited the nephew you are not sure you even want to miss after you find out what drug him away from his home and an Uncle you want gone after you find out he is happy with this situation. You infer several things from the text that turn out to be untrue, this is very disturbing, it is not a huge plot twist, it does not make the man brilliant, it is unconnected text written in paragraph form made to LOOK like a novel, instead it is indecisiveness at its' best and poor writing if one wants to call a spade a spade. I gave the book two stars merely because I finished it, the one decent quality the book has is the ability to make you finish the read hoping that something similar to closure will happen by the final page, that maybe you missed a clue or a paragraph somewhere and it will all come together at the end, not to spoil the read for you, but I will jump ahead to the final page and clue you in. NOTHING gets solved, nothing is understood, read it forward, read it backward, read it hanging upside down, the book ends up making no sense and you have no clue what happened, and it is not a fulfilling sensation just makes you want to get Straub's editor's e-mail address and query as to what medication they could have been taking on the day they okayed this book for print.

Too many storylines--this book could have easily been 3 separate books. Not only were there too many storylines, they didn't mesh. Wife/mother commits suicide. Nobody cares, and it doesn't matter to the plot anyway. There are lots more examples like that in this book. And the ending is incredibly disappointing. Nothing happens, nothing is wrapped up. It just....ends. A total snoozer. 2 stars because I barely managed kto made it to the end of the book.

Peter Straub may not be the greatest writer. Nor is he anywhere near the worst. Straub is better than mediocre, and that says a lot in our time and age. I feel most authors of our day are mediocre at best. This particular work is inviting to read among the alternatives. The book is easily acceptible for YA to read as much so as it is for adults. The chronology and character point of view changes are agreeable and easily followed without revealing too much. The story wraps up quite nicely and offers a gentle satisfaction to the reader (IMO).

Best way to describe it is, a calmer version of 6th Sense meets softcore detective genre. Recommended!

This is my first Straub book, after enjoying his two partnerships with Stephen King. This book has a slower, plodding pace than I usually enjoy, with relatively few juicy pieces of insite or language constructions that can still make slow, plodding books enjoyable to read. The story itself wasn't bad -- kept me turning the pages. But when I suddenly realized I was still in the "middle" of the story, but with only 25 pages to read, I started to get uneasy. Sure enough, the book ends about how my little sister could've written it if she had a weekend deadline and no imagination. It just suddenly gets wrapped up. I kept waiting for the huge "AHA!" twist or freaky chase scene or the part where the hero is either almost murdered or revealed to be the murderer himself...alas, it actually ended like a newspaper article. This was lame. Way lame.

I have always considered Peter Straub one of the most intelligent horror writers of today. However, Lost boy, lost girl reads like a juvenile tale. Scary? Horrific? Boring, boring, boring. I cannot believe this book is a product of Straub's pen. Enough to say I found Jimbo the most interesting person of the story. Yawn!!

Within the initial few pages of the book it showed promise but did not deliver. Towards the end the twist was weak, uninteresting and didn't seem to relate well to the story whatsoever. The only good thing about the book is the website. If you choose to read this book, make sure you see the site afterwards.

Like the abandoned house in Michigan Street, there is a lot more to this story than first meets the eye. It has unnerving hidden passages and steep stairways that lead down into the darkest depths. Read it slowly, taste each morsel fully and allow time for it to digest. Then afterwards take a quiet walk along the beach, but beware the red sky.
My spine is still tingling. This masterfully crafted work is one of the best books I have read in years, and I am in awe of Peter Straub.

This was my first and last Peter Straub novel.
First off, I didn't know the author was famous for collaborating with Stephen King. But after reading the

first chapters I immediately realized the resemblance in setting scenes and creating atmosphere.

My summary would be: a boy is intrigued by an empty house and tries to find out about its past that might

have something to do with his mother's suicide.

The best about the book is that it excels at creating an eerie and gloomy atmosphere. I don't think stylistic

devices are used especially well or that the story is told with constant quality but somehow it makes you

feel depressed or scared nevertheless.

However there just is no substance to it plot-wise. The actual events that are described are surely gruesome

but it's nothing one hasn't heard, read or seen in one medium or the other. Plus, details of the

incomprehensible acts are not given, so there's no shocker in store either. Due to the atmosphere the reader

expects dramatic revelations to the mystery but when things are unraveled it happens in a rather

disappointing, random way.
The conclusion to the plot is on one hand totally down to earth and plain and on the other hand absolutely

supernatural. I find it a total bore.

Although I'm no native English speaker (reader :) linguistically I find the style horrible. Sometimes the

story is advanced through journal entries that neither give better insight into that person's point of view

or mind nor do anything else for the presentation. A few e-mails are mixed in too that are written by a teen. Here the author employs txt speech with is ridiculously exaggerated.

The result is rather confusing as journal entries, reported speech and current actions overlap. The reader's

experience and flow of reading is disrupted often. The words and phrases the author has chosen to describe

the setting and characters were quite strainful to me. The two or so characters the reader gets to know a

little better are not sympathetic which adds to the fact that there's nothing likable about the book. But

then the reader hardly has any insight into their emotions or thoughts anyway.

In conclusion I recommend this book to people who like Stephen King's way of writing but not to those looking

for a page-turner. The book is missing a captivating story and enjoyable characters which doesn't makes it a rewarding read at all.

I just finished reading lost boy lost girl, yes I admit that i couldnt put the book down. but the ending didnt do it for me. I didn't think it satisfied me. The begininng had great detail, maybe way to much, but come on whats with that ending? no one finds Mark's body and we dont even know how he dies. And whats with the serial killer. not much is mentioned about this men, till the end of the story. and come on lily 19 falling in love with a 15yr old. yeah right. what kind of ghost is this. the kid is barely reaching puberty. besides that it scared me.

This is an excellent tale. The only reasons I gave it a "3", instead of the "4" that the contents deserve, are a) its weak conclusion: and b)it's mighty SLIM, for $34 (Canadian funds) - I expect more "meat" from Straub.

Good idea, lots of potential but it reads like an outline, a first draft. It was like eating chinese food. Needed a little more depth. The story needed a strong or stronger bond between Underhill and the boy Mark to of made it work.

This book deserves more stars. I read this book a long time ago and I still remember the closeness I felt with the characters. There is a deep and tortured soul feeling to this book. If you like Straub, you will love this book too.

A promising start leads to a ludicrous ending, as the author expects the reader to embrace embaressing & improbable communications from the dead. I'm all for a fantastic tale, but this is stupid and sophmoric, an insult. Do yourself a favor and buy something else!

Hi

I have never read a book by peter straub before and i won't again.....full of redundent dialoge that keeps appearing over and over...Stephen King said "may be straubs best...work. hack and former writing pal to another....

a real snoozer and highly un-original....we got the hero..his cold fish of a brother....a crotchety old neighbor(a homosexual for political correctness.)..This guy and Stephen King could be twins as far as bad writing goes....kind of book you rush through the last 100 pages to read just to get the damn thing finished...I can't keep count of the numerous conversational repeats..bury this turkey

I found the last half of the book more interesting than the first. I got tired of reading about two boy skateboarding around the neighborhood. Only until they entered "the house", did things get interested.