Lost Boy Lost Girl : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Below average
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: I don't get the ending
Review: I thought it started off great, but I was very disappointed with the end. I don't get what happened? I don't know if that is what Mr. Straub was going for, but it seemed incomplete to me. Was Mark killed by a serial killer or did he run off with some ghost-girl? I actually came to the review section to see if anyone else was a "lost boy or a lost girl" ... I know I am!

Rating:
Summary: Challenging, Engrossing, and Thoroughly Entertaining
Review: In the style of author T.M. Wright, Straub has created a wonderfully creepy and classy tale of terror. Fascinating and believable characters are thrust into this world of murder, suicide, and kidnapping. Although the timeline is twisted, throwing the reader constantly from the past to the present, I was never lost. I can see why Straub won the Bram Stoker award for this book. His beautiful prose will not easily be outdone. He has definitely made me into a fan.

Rating:
Summary: spellbinding
Review: it's 5:30 in the morning and i'm on line to buy my 15 year old son a copy. I absolutly loved it. Sure it may be a bit sureal but no one does that better then Peter Straub. He does nothing but get better with age and he was top of the line to begine with. I could not put it down. And I will never forget it.

Rating:
Summary: A very nice little ghost story.
Review: Lost Boy, Lost Girl is one of the best horror/supernatural books that I have read in a long time. While not perfect, it rises above its flaws to make for an engrossing and evocative reading experience.

The characters of Mark and Timothy are well-drawn, and the plot commands attention even as it winds through elements as diverse as suicide, serial killers, skateboards, and the life of a writer. It has its genuinely creepy moments, and is refreshingly unpredictable.

On the minus side, the pace of the book is strange. It almost seems as though it should have been a much longer novel. By the time you finish the introduction, the book is a third gone. The ending feels in many ways like a non sequitur. Straub almost gets away with his left-field conclusion, but ultimately it detracts from the novel rather than adding to it.

Recommended for horror fans who appreciate good writing more than they do the gore. Straub fans will not be disappointed, and it is not a bad place to begin with his work in general.

Rating:
Summary: too moody for its own good
Review: Peter Straub is often referred to as one of the top horror writers this side of SK, so I was certainly expecting more than this breakfast biscuit of a ghost story. A teenage boy has disappeared in a house with a dastardly history. His uncle comes for the funeral of his sister in law, the boys mother who has killed herself, and begins a search. Straub manages to encompass ghosts, pedophilia, serial killers, a haunted house, creepy visions, and a gratuitous Magnetic Fields reference. This book isnt very scary at all and the characters are too shallow to register with us emotionally. Mark, the boy, is a cluster of teen cliches. Finally Mark is living happily with Patrick Swayze in some happy otherworld, so everythings OK! Much too New Agey, and very repepitive due to shifting points of view...

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. Other than Tom Pasmore- I am not exactly sure how it fits in.

Overall, I give "Lost boy, Lost girl" a solid recommendation, especially to any Peter Straub fans.

Rating:
Summary: A Ghostly Novel Of Horror And Hope
Review: Tim Underhill, a novelist living in Manhattan, receives word that his sister-in-law has suddenly committed suicide, with no apparent warning. He returns to his Midwestern hometown of Milhaven to be with his morose, callow brother Philip, and Mark, his fifteen year-old nephew. Shortly after Underhill's arrival, Mark disappears. Underhill is desperate to find the boy, especially when he learns that a brutal pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity. Tim's asks his friend Tom Pasmore, one of the best PIs around, for assistance in discovering Mark's whereabouts and the identity of the serial killer.

Teenage skateboarder Mark Underhill had become obsessed by a mysterious abandoned house where the killer may have taken refuge. Unbeknownst to Mark, the house, which he had never noticed before, has strong ties to the Underhill family. He and his best buddy, Jimbo, eventually break in to explore, and to unravel the mysteries of this customized building, with its secret passageways and hidden hollows. Mark finds that the house almost talks to him - whispers to him of the horrors that have taken place under its roof. And in this evil place, Mark discovers a soul mate, a ghostly girl who beckons him, coaxing him deeper into the darkness.

"Lost Boy Lost Girl: A Novel" is both a disturbing mystery and a ghost story. It is not a traditional ghost story, however, but a tale of what happens when one believes in ghosts. This is also a novel about hauntings, sinister, filled with remorse and dread. Peter Straub touches on more traditional themes also, like dysfunctional families, the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and the onset of middle age.

The tale is told from multiple viewpoints, and moves back and forth through time and space. It is all pulled together, however, by Tim Underhill's journal entries. Straub's narrative is elegant, compelling and rich. He clearly has a good ear for dialogue, especially as evidenced between the two boys, Mark and Jimbo. He has created here an atmosphere that is at once haunting, (as in a pervasive or lingering force - melancholy), terrifying and hopeful.

I was riveted by this story and found the ending to be spellbinding.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: Strange
Review: very strange, is Mark dead or alive, that I can't answer, perhaps you can after reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not pleased
Review: 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.