Rating: 
Summary: Straub's best work yet!
Review: Though I've had problems with his novels in the past, with his sixteenth (winner of the 2003 Bram Stoker award for best novel), Peter Straub has brought me back into the fold. Any writer who can combine all the best elements of mystery, horror, haunted house, serial killer, and literary fiction into an emotional rollercoaster with a heart, like lost boy lost girl, deserves as wide a readership as he can get. When his sister-in-law dies "without warning" (which he finds is a euphemism for suicide), bestselling horror novelist Tim Underhill (Straub doppelganger and recurring character along with Tom Pasmore of the recent "Blue Rose" novels Koko, Mystery, and The Throat) flies back home to Millhaven, Ill. to be with his brother, Philip, and 15-year-old nephew, Mark. Not long after Tim returns home, he gets a frantic call from Philip with the news that Mark has disappeared. And evidence points to the idea that the long-empty house at 3323 North Michigan Avenue once owned by serial killer Joseph Kalendar may have had something to do with both. Ever since Julia, Peter Straub has joined the ranks of subtle horror, patterning himself after the writings of masters like Henry James while retaining his own modern sensibilities. lost boy lost girl represents the peak of his craft's development. It takes after such supernatural thrillers as The Turn of the Screw while remaining firmly in the present day. While telling an essentially linear story, Straub jumps back and forth from past to present and from one point of view to another. Tim Underhill is the central character but the emotional core lies in young Mark, whose life is the most affected by the events in the story. It is also he whose actions most affect the other characters as he explores the house (which he believes was responsible for his mother's suicide) and finds some unexpected contents that will change his life forever. Straub uses many varying methods to tell his story: second-hand rememberance as Mark's best friend Jimbo talks to the police and Tim, Tim's journal kept during the period, third-person narration (both Tim and omniscient), and first-person non-journal narration from Tim's point of view. Yet, he somehow manages to make it all flow into a coherent narrative that any genre fan will love to dive into. lost boy lost girl is proof that one of the legends of the horror genre is not content to rest on his laurels, still choosing to develop his writing and remain deserving of his title.
Rating: 
Summary: Shockingly flawed
Review: Okay, so a 15 year old boy is missing. And a serial killer is on the loose. The boy's friend, his uncle, his father, and the police, all know that the missing kid was poking around an abandoned house during the week before his disappearance. They also know that a strange man was seen inside the house and around the vicinity of the house. So do they drop it like it's hot and immediately search the house?? No. They wait till the very end of the book!! Because if they'd searched the house right away, the mystery would have been solved, and there would have been no plot.
Avoid this drivel.
Rating: 
Summary: Writing Style
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: I liked it
Review: It was pretty spookie. Alittle disapointing at the end but I liked it. I just lent it to my sister to read without her asking. If that says anything.
Rating:
Summary: quite overrated
Review: Well, I finished it. That's saying something I guess, but what a waste of time. It's one of those books that had a lot of nice reviews by an author who is well respected. I used to read Straub's early works but stopped reading him about the same time I stopped reading Stephen King. I kept expecting the book to go somewhere. The protaginist Tim Underhill held little interest to me. The e-mails from beyond were an extremely silly gimmick. I kept expecting to like the book more to be scared excited or something, but in the end I was just bored. I read the paperback, but did not even bother to read the first ten pages of the next Straub/ Underhill novel that they tend to put at the end of popular writers paperback editions. (I peeked it had those silly e-mails again.) It'll be awhile before I give Straub another chance.
Rating: 
Summary: Another fine offering from Straub
Review: Peter Straub has written many fine novels - Ghost Story, Shadowland, Mystery, The Throat (5 *'s all) - and Lost Boy, Lost Girl ranks just a tad below those.
A simple story on the face of it is infused with an atmosphere that only Straub can create. While the story is carrying along on the surface, we are invited into the story below, the real story, where reality and fantasy intertwine...
Straub fans will undoubtedly enjoy this book and I think it will gain a number of new fans.
Rating:
Summary: Lost Boy, Lost Girl...Lost Reader
Review: Let me start by saying that this is the first solo novel that I have read by Peter Straub. I read "Black House" which he wrote with Stephen King, and enjoyed it very much. I have also read "Magic Terror," which is a collection of Mr. Straub's shorter stories and most of them left me with with the feeling of..."HUH!?!" Two stories didn't even make any sense to me at all, and others left me saying to myself: "That's it?" I had a simular feeling to "lost boy lost girl."
This is the story of a writer, named Tim, who goes back to his home town of Millhaven after the death of his brothers wife Nancy. Shortly after returning home to New York after the funeral, his brother Phillip calls, saying that his nephew Mark has disappeared. So Tim returns back to Millhaven.
Time jumps back to before Nancy's death and Mark's story is told. One day, while him and his buddy Jimbo are skateboarding, a house catches his attention. Although it's always been there, directly behind his own home, he just never noticed it. Almost like the house didn't want to be seen.
Even though there's a killer loose in Millhaven that's targeting boys Mark's age, all he cares about is that house. He's become obsessed. When he askes his mother about it she makes him promise never to break in, but of course, he doesn't listen. He has to find out the secrets that the house holds.
(I realize I gave a VERY bland description of the story/plot, but it kind of annoys me when a reviewer goes into the entire story, hence telling it all)
I really enjoyed the book, to a point, and the way it was told. I thought the jumping through time was an interesting device. There were times when I was genuinly creeped outand couldn't read fast enough, like when Mark finds the hidden passages, or learning about Nancy's cousin.
The characters were believeable, except for Ronnie and Mark at the end of the book. Phillip, for example, is a guy I know, we all know. Every time he was in the book I just wanted to punch him. Sure, he was having a hard time, having lost his wife and son, but I wanted to punch him before that...and every time he spoke.
Now, for my biggest complaint...the ending. The book was going so well and it feels like Mr. Straub just got tired of writing it. Maybe there was a deadline that had to be met or something, but it just seemed rushed, almost like it was thought up at the last minute. Everything just needed to be ended, so it is, as quickly as possible, even the Sherman Park killer part of the story. Why does Mark do what he does? Does being in the house make him stupid? Is he possessed? What was with the whole computer crashing thing? Why was that? I found myself asking that question a lot after the final pages of "lost boy lost girl"...why?
Rating:
Summary: Almost as good as "Ghost Story"
Review: Peter Straub is one of the underrated authors of his genre. At his finest, such as "Ghost Story" he is the finest horror author that I have read. While "Lost Boy, Lost Girl", may not quite be in that class it is still a very spooky tale.
The basic ingredients are all there... serial killers, haunted houses, skeltons (in the closet... that is) and much suspense. My chief complaint is that the one thing the "novel" is missing is more pages. Straub has essentially written a novella and turned it into a novel. I am not sure if he should have added more meat to the story or taken out some of the fluff.
Here are a few of my thoughts-
- For a shorter novel it really does start slowly. When a book is only 280 pages long you really want to be "Captured" before the 75th page.
- Very creepy story - a little Salem's Lot and a little "Ghost Story"
- Fits in as part of the "Blue Rose" collection.
Overall, I give "Lost boy, Lost girl" a solid recommendation, especially to any Peter Straub fans.
Rating:
Summary: Straub at his finest?
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: yawn
Review: I have read Ghost Story, a book I much admire for its prose and story. However, I did have a problem with the off-beat ending which I thought destroyed an otherwise decent novel. Now comes Lost Boy Lost Girl, his sixteenth novel. This book is filled with so many layers, narratives, and storylines that you have to follow closely to "get" the story. The first third of the book involves the presentation of the mystery and the setting, character development and motivation, etc. The second third deals with the haunted images of a decrepit old house, a phantom girl, and disturbing images. It is in the middle of the story that it draws you in and captivates your attention and, frankly, scares you. So far so good. However, the last part of the book, roughly 100 pages or so, disappoints. This is where Straub has lost his momentum and when the story turns into a predicatble formulaic serial killer mystery, we have lost all interest and hope. I found myself trudging along trying to finish this novel for several weeks, instead of finishing it in a couple of days. Why is it that Straub (who I think is infinitely more talented than King) cannot finish a novel and knock your socks off scared? This will be my last book by this author, who seems to lose his macabre touch with each successive novel he writes.
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