Title: Lost

Author: Gregory Maguire

Publisher: William Morrow 2001

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 352

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Telling Tales; What's in a name -- Lost or Found; ebook; Bingo - 1 Reread

How I Got It: iPad read

Children's novelist Winifred Rudge flies from her Boston-area home to London to pay a visit to her distant cousin and old friend John. Instead of receiving his guest open-armed, John is nowhere to be found. His office staff is evasive in fielding Winnie's calls, and Mac and Jenkins, a pair of superstitious home remodelers hired by John to work on the kitchen in his absence, begin behaving strangely, as eerie symbols appear on the wall and inexplicable noises issue from the walled-up chimney space. That Winnie is not alone in her victimization by an otherworldly spirit is a good sign she's not having a breakdown. Setting the story in Winnie and John's ancestral home and filling the neighboring house with John's intimidating new inamorata, Allegra, makes us root for the self-destructive Winnie, a most unlikely heroine. An essential purchase and a substantial Halloween treat.

Hmmm... I loved Wicked and I liked Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. But for some reason, I'm just not that into Lost. I remember reading this back when it was released. I thought it was imaginative. Upon rereading, I still feel it's imaginative, but I'm not really sucked into the story. I can't really get behind Winnie as a main character. And the combination of various fairy tale stories gets a bit old after a while. I would have like a more streamlined plot line. I don't think I will be rereading this one.