From what I knew, Gregory Maguire rewrote stories and fairy-tales into the "true story" for adults, which I enjoyed quite a bit with Wicked.

Lost, however, is a wholly new story that references A Christmas Carol, Jack the Ripper, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland. This sounds like an interesting concept, I'm sure, but while G.M. is throwing the references in here and there, it's like he forgot about the main story line. Winnie/Wendy/Ophelia/Opal the main character comes to town, finds that her cousin (and former lover apparently, but you have to read that in the book, it isn't on the dust jacket or anything), John is missing. She stays in his house, harasses John's neighbors, employers, and girlfriend about his whereabouts (turns out he was just avoiding her). Contractors are fixing the house when she arrives, they bust down a wall and let out a ghost of some sort. The ghost possesses a cat and makes it eat other cats, then possesses an old lady and makes her eat cats, too. While this is going on, you don't know it's a possession, though, you believe that it was just the old lady being bonkers and eating her cats. You find out at the end of chapter 4. Winendophelal throws a temper tantrum at her cousin when he comes back into the picture, she runs away, she goes to see the old lady, and then she herself becomes possessed.

Honestly, if you want to skip the first two chapters all together, just read the back of the book.

The main character answers all questions with a snide remark or another question. Reading Lost is like playing one of those three-dollar PC games where you have to investigate some strange happenings, no one gives you a straight answer, and at the end you find out the bad guy is the person that asked for help in the first place.

I read a lot of bad reviews about the book before I read it. I didn't hear the best things about Wicked before I read it either and I was pleasantly surprised, unfortunately Lost didn't have the same effect on me.

If someone should happen to read it and decide that it is a great book, I would love to speak to this person and get their point of view. I'm almost hoping there was a deeper meaning in there somewhere that I just missed.

Though this was not the best book ever, I'll probably still continue to read Gregory Maguire books for the twisted fairy-tale fun.