2025 read #90: Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire.

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire

146 pages

Published 2022

Read from November 21 to November 23

Rating: 4 out of 5

Oof, this one comes swinging for your heart right from the start. (Even the contents warning made me tear up, it was that sensitively written.) Today’s hero, Antsy, has to flee from home when her stepfather’s grooming and gaslighting gets to a crisis point. She ends up in a shop of lost things, joining a magpie and an ancient woman in their travels through Doors.

Antsy’s story is heartbreaking and defiant, one of the best (and most devastating) Wayward Girls stories McGuire has written. The fantasy elements map so perfectly onto the character’s personal journey and the book’s thematic elements, something I love when authors pull it off.

My main complaint is that, as is often the case in this series of novellas, there just isn’t enough room for Antsy’s tale to develop as much as I would want it to. We skip from her first day or two of adjustment to a couple years into her shopkeeper apprenticeship. Though, reluctantly, I have to admit this accelerated narration is once again thematically consistent with the peril Antsy finds herself in.

I do wish Lost hadn’t taken the time to dole out exposition for the rest of the series, and instead had been its own standalone, rather longer novel. But the story we get is one of the best in the series so far, so I won’t complain too much.