The Book of Lost Things

My soon to be mother-in-law and sister-in-law loaned me an excellent book the last time they were in town. It's called The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly.

I shall review it for you now!

First of all, this book is totally creepy. I literally had to sleep with a night light while I was reading it. Kitties were not sufficient. Especially since Sophie Soph likes to walk on me in the middle of the night. Sometimes she likes to mix it up and take a flying leap off of something (the dresser, the nightstand, even the floor works) to land on my body. I imagine she thinks this is absolutely hilarious. I mean, kitties must get their entertainment from somewhere, right?

Anyway. The Book of Lost Things is a story about a little boy in WWII-era England whose mom dies, dad gets remarried and they have a baby, and the little boy is totally annoyed. Hates his new step mom, hates his new baby brother, hates his new home. He's an avid reader though, so he finds solace in books and fairy tales. Oh, also, his books talk to him.

Yeah, I know. You totally want to read this story now, right? I mean, talking books. Awesome!

Ok well the story starts out nice enough, but then you get a little father into the fairy tale stuff, and that's when it starts to get scary. Because they're not normal fairy tales... they're like, twisted fairy tales. It's weird. And there are like wolves (that talk and eat people) and trolls (who have spears and stab people) and a woodsman and a knight on a white horse and witches and dwarves and castles and more wolves and all kinds of scary stuff happens and it's actually very gory and disgusting (heads on pikes, heads getting axed off, skeletons hanging from trees, flesh eating monsters, etc.).

But it's an excellent story. I read it in like a week. I love the ending too. I bawled my eyes out. I love books like that, where you're reading it and you're like "omg this is so f*cked up" and you get to the end and it's got this fabulous ending and it just makes reading all the heads-on-pikes stuff worthwhile!