Lost Boy, Lost Girl

By: Peter Straub

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son- fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill - vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother's suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No mere empty building, the house whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story, and Tim Underhill comes to fear that in investigating its unspeakable history, Mark stumbled across its last and greatest secret: a ghostly lost girl who may have coaxed the needy, suggestible boy into her mysterious domain.

©2003 Peter Straub (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

ALAN ALDA WITHOUT THE SMIRK

LET'S GO TO THE DUMP AND SHOOT RATS
A house in plain sight that nobody sees or sees, but forgets. A house with hidden passage ways. A basement you don't want to enter. A man with no face. Abducted children. A huge mystery.

RENT A MINISTER
This is a story told in overlapping time lines, from the view of different characters. The suspense builds during the story and it gets more interesting as it goes along. For me it never hit great, but neither did it hit bad. I did not feel I wasted a credit, but I did feel it could have been more. It does not raise the emotions that you get from Orson Scott Card's Lost Boys and it is never that terrifying. It is more just creepy. It is more of a paranormal then a horror story. Had Peter included the thoughts of the monster, it could have been scarier. A prequel to this actually should be written. We get this mostly as bad things that happened in the past, as opposed to the present.

It's ok i guess?

I mean it's super well written. Straub is an excellent writer but I feel like the actual story fell a bit short. It's definitely not a bad book by any means, it just felt a bit lost (no pun intended). It is 2 really good stories jammed together than made one just ok story. It all comes together in the end and makes sense as a whole but I just felt like neither story was completely fleshed out. If you're a fan of Straub I would definitely give it a listen but just be prepared to just be whelmed by it.

fast paced thriller

Combines various subplots, making the listening fast paced. Narrertor was decent. Overall a goodbook, a little long.

A great narrative thriller

I’ve read/listened to many of Peter Straub’s books: Ghost Story (ridiculously good and expertly written), Floating Dragon (waaaay better then some say - but not the audiobook, get a physical copy - II wish audible would put out an unabridged recording, but they have not as of OCT. 2020), Shadowland, Julie, If You Could See Me Now, A Dark Matter, etc.

Lost Boy, Lost Girl is a complex thriller wrapped in a seemingly standard narrative: a writer looking to mend uncultivated familial relationships, a killer on the loose, teenage boys dealing with adolescent maturity, a small town and minor characters you revisit a lot in Straub’s dominion.

This one creeps up it’s hill, taking its time, like Sisyphus, and Straub’s ability to write characters so well makes you care about digging into their minds. You’re learning new things about all of them all the way to the end, and it is an enjoyable ride.

It’s not my favorite of his, but for how much story/character he puts into this smaller novel (for Straub, this book is about 1/3 the length of Koko/The Throat and about half the length of Ghost Story.

I got through it in just a few sittings. You won’t be wrong giving this one a go.

I enjoyed it quite a bit.

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All That It Needed To Be

I am not sure anything other than the presence from another realm of existance makes this a horror novel. It was however an intriguing look into mystery and madness linked to Mark & Tim. I enjoyed the story and characters which were developed adequately enough to get the story told. Not the authors best work but other works have set the bar pretty high.
The performance was befitting the landscape of the novel and well read and produced.

Meh!

Needs more show don’t tell to be interesting. In addition, the plot is expected and plodding.