Review Detail

Frannie and Louis have been online friends for years as part of a support group. Time has brought them closer, and they find they have weird things in common like losing random items constantly, but they’ve never meet face to face. When a string of events have them both setting off for Austin, Texas, they start to find the lost items of the other person as they make their way to each other. Together, they might find exactly what they’ve been missing all along.

Katrina Leno knows exactly how to mix magical realism, mental illness, road trips, and romance into an adventurous and sort of heartbreaking, sort of uplifting story. THE LOST & FOUND features Frannie and Louis, two teens who have a habit of losing things. The magical realism of the things being lost and mysteriously reappearing to the other person is a unique twist and is simply beautiful as the characters become more and more real. For a novel that has the two love interests in different parts of the country for most of the book, their friendship/budding romance is one of the sincerest and sweetest I’ve read in a while.

One of the elements that makes the story so moving is the importance of Louis’s relationship with his sister and Frannie’s relationship with her best friend. This is a book about friendship just as much, if not more, as it is romance. Frannie’s family is far from traditional, and her journey in learning who and what matters most to her is stunning. As Louis’s sister is particularly involved in his mental health, their relationship is powerfully close but not without its own share of sibling trouble. These characters are not ones readers will forget soon.

A bit weird, a lot important, THE LOST & FOUND is a moving story about relationships, family, and the things we want to find most of all.