The Lost and the Found (Cat Clarke)

The Lost and the Found
Cat Clarke
Crown Books
Fiction, YA Thriller
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Faith Long was just four years old when Laurel, her adopted older sister, was taken from their front yard in broad daylight. Since then, everything about her life has been warped around that absence. Her mother threw herself into the investigation, ensuring that the police and public didn't forget Laurel's face so long as she was missing. Her father, equally devastated, eventually had to leave, moving in with a boyfriend who becomes like a second father to Faith. As for Faith herself, she knows she'll never be anything but Laurel's sister, the pale imitation, the consolation prize who will never live up to the memory of the missing girl.
Thirteen years later, a miracle happens: a young woman turns up at the family's old house, clutching a battered teddy bear just like the one Lauren disappeared with... a young woman who claims to be Laurel Long.
She's reticent to discuss what happened, or where she's been, or how she managed to escape after so long. She's clearly been traumatized, and nobody (except maybe their mother) expects her to be the same sweet little girl she was when she vanished. But even Faith is surprised to find how many mixed emotions are dredged up when she lays eyes on the nineteen-year-old Laurel for the first time, and how much more chaotic her already-unstable life becomes... and that's before she begins to wonder about some of Laurel's behaviors and newly-acquired quirks. As much as the girl's disappearance threw the family into disarray, her return may destroy what little they salvaged.

REVIEW: The disappearance of a child has to be one of the greatest traumas a family can experience, especially when they are never found. Those left behind are left with questions that fester like open wounds, not helped by a media and society always hungry for salacious details and wild speculation. The Lost and the Found shows how even what should be a moment of closure and happiness can instead lead to more trauma, especially when new questions are raised.
Faith Long is a shy seventeen-year-old who only recently managed to make a few friends and even find a boyfriend; her entire life, she's learned to doubt that anyone could be interested in her as a person and not simply as Laurel's sister. Her mother never stopped her campaign to find Laurel, even at the cost of her marriage (and more than one accusation that she was milking the disappearance for the money and attention, accusations that may oversimplify her motives but aren't entirely without merit), and sometimes doesn't even seem to see Faith. Her father, at least, is a steadying presence, no less involved or loving despite living elsewhere, though it's his French boyfriend Michel who becomes the real rock Faith can lean on in hard times. Faith is slowly, tentatively looking forward to college and adulthood and leaving the toxic family nest, becoming her own person at last... at least, until Laurel turns up again.
If Laurel the absent sister was an inescapable shadow over Faith's life, Laurel the returned is a veritable black hole, sucking everyone into her presence. She has been through indescribable Hell - the book never gets graphic but makes more than enough allusions and hints - and Faith knows she needs to be understanding and patient, but can't help feeling that her life has been upended yet again, and yet again nobody seems to notice how she's being trampled underfoot and forgotten... not helped by how their mother immediately latches onto the returned Laurel, elevating her to saintly status and even arranging fresh press conferences and media outings touting the "happy ending" to their long years of suffering. Faith struggles to relearn what it means to be a sister and to not lose what little life and independence she managed to attain from before, even as she tries to reconnect with someone who sometimes seems so familiar, and other times seems like a total stranger. Along the way are hints that there are important things Laurel isn't telling anyone, hints that could destroy the fragile new normal Faith and her family are trying to build.
A couple subplots felt like they didn't quite go anywhere by the end, a few hints that were never followed up. For the most part, this is a solid thriller about the struggles of a shattered family to come to grips with the unthinkable twice over (both the abduction and the return), and the struggle of one teen girl to reconcile the oddly ambivalent feelings and conflicting instincts raised by the "miracle" that was supposed to fix everything.

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