After a night of drinking and poor decision-making at their small Irish town's annual bonfire, Olive, Rose, Ivy and twins Hazel and Rowan all lose something. Coincidentally, a spellbook that fetches lost items appears, and the teens take the chance to right their situations, quickly discovering the spell may have drummed up some possessions--and people--they would rather stay hidden.
Moïra Fowley-Doyle (The Accident Season) uses three protagonists--Olive, Hazel and (through diary entries) Laurel--to tell this dreamy, bewitching story that walks the line of real and surreal. Before the characters even meet, they're connected to one another through small coincidences: Hazel finds Olive's lost shoe in her bike spoke and Olive picks up Hazel's jacket at the bonfire. Fowley-Doyle effortlessly (almost sneakily) places these acts of fate into the narrative, begging readers to read her book in one sitting without missing the smallest of plot points that may tie everything together. Her eerie, atmospheric storytelling--parents in trancelike states doling out strange warnings, blustery summer storms and crossword clues predicting the immediate future--is the perfect backdrop to the real-life problems the teenagers face, including alcoholism, sexual assault and abandonment. When the stories finally collide, the twists and turns come fast and furiously, making shocked readers wonder how they missed what was right in front of them the whole time.
Spellbook of the Lost and Found is an enchanting sophomore novel about friendships, family and everyday magic. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader