This is likely going to be an unpopular opinion based the positively gushing reviews all over, but I didn’t like Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2026) It was quite nearly a rare DNF for me. Perhaps I’m so hard on it because it bills itself on being the exact type of quirky family story I tend to enjoy, but quirk without heart doesn’t do it for me. And I couldn’t find the heart in this novel.
If you don’t want it spoiled, don’t keep reading. That’s the only warning you’ll get.
It started out strong, I will give it that. But it falls flat, the timeline gets a touch jumbled, the ending is rushed, and the characters lose steam. And, as mentioned, there is little to no heart in the quirk.
There’s Harper, who reminded me a bit of an older and grittier Beverly Cleary’s Ramona. She’s smart and wicked, precocious and cutting. She’s always getting in trouble and ends up at a wilderness camp for troubled kids where she “becomes a woman.” Then there’s the middle daughter, Louise, who has found herself in a relationship with an online fundamentalist who is coaching her through bombing a beauty pageant at the church. Abigail, the oldest, is gorgeous and young, rendering her perfect for the human trafficking ring her dad’s boss runs. Catherine, their mother, has decided that her had Bud should have an open marriage. Bud becomes suicidal until his supervisor encourages him to join the Lost Lambs support group, where he meets Miss. Winkle. In turn, he notices the cargo problem at work (which is the human trafficking) simply because he’s trying to be a good employee to get a bonus to take her on a trip.
Oh, and there is a priest with a questionable history and questionable current involvement with Bud’s boss and that masked group of friends who like young women. (Don’t worry, it’s only trafficking young woman to drain their blood because therein lies immortality. Most survive.)
Then there’s the gnat problem. The church is overrun with gnats, and someone decided it would be funny and quirky to give the book a gnat problem. Every “nat” in the novel becomes “gnat” – at least until they fumigate the church – dognate instead of donate, gnatural instead of natural. It’s not cute and charming. It’s not funny. It was annoying as shit for over half the novel.
I felt this novel simply tried too hard. But as I said, most folks seem to love it.
I did, however, love the cover.
A Girl Named Tommi 