Lost Christmas

by David Logan and John Hay

[Jo]

I received Lost Christmas as a Christmas pressie from my Mum and Dad. I originally planned to keep it until December of this year, so I would be reading a Christmassy book around Christmas, but had to pick it up on my Mum's insistence. Why? Well, she wants to watch the film Lost Christmas which we recorded when it was on last month. She's not the type of person who can watch movies based on a book or movies where a book version has been writen (as is the case with Lost Christmas) without reading the book first, so I let her borrow it. Once she finished, she said I HAD to read the book before we watched the movie because it was brilliant, and as she wanted to watch the movie soon, I had to read the book, like, yesterday. Obviously, my Mum didn't say those exact words, but you get the idea. She was right, the book is brilliant.

I picked Lost Christmas up thinking it was a children's book, but I would say it's more a pre-teen/early teen novel, with cross over appeal. The loss of Goose's parents has had a huge, huge impact on Goose's life. He's gone a bit off the rails because he hasn't dealt with things properly, and his Nan, who is his guardian now, has Alzheimer's that's steadily getting worse. His life doesn't look good. And the lives of various other people in the book have lives that are less than perfect. Lost Christmas reminds of movies like Love, Actually, as there are a lot of characters with their own individual stories, but they're all linked. It was quite a novelty to see something like this in a book; instead of just one or maybe two narrators like I'm used to, there were a whole number of them - though some had only very small parts, it really doesn't get confusing at all. The main narrator is Goose and it's his story that is the main focus. There's such a wealth of characters, but each of them have experienced loss in some form.

Which leads on to my next point. Lost Christmas is sad. There are some very light, amusing moments, but there are a number of moments that are just incredibly sad. There's one excruciating moment where I came so close to tears, because it's one of those rare moments where you know what's going to happen - you actually know, it's not a theory or a prediction, you know - and it's nothing good, and reading it is just awful! It's drawn out over several pages, and I just wanted to put the book down. It's excruciating! Really, there are some terribly upsetting moments.

I was so surprised by the ending! All the way through I was trying to work out who Anthony was, I had various theories that were based on nothing but guesses. They were discarded and another thought up, and then brought back, but never guessed what his story was, or how he knew everything about everyone else. It's so clever! And the actual ending of the book was just so good! Oh, it was just lovely! I loved.

The cover for Lost Christmas is really beautiful, but other than the snow, I have absolutely no idea how it relates to the story. I have no clue about the tree, and it looks like the shortest figure is a girl, which makes no sense to me. I am at a lost. But it is gorgeous!

A really sweet but also sad novel that's just wonderful and brilliant and all things good! I highly recommend Lost Christmas, it's fantastic!

From Once Upon a Bookcase - YA book blog