From “a master of slow-burn suspense” (Shelf Awareness), a simmering family drama about a father and daughter who embark on a road trip through the American South — but what they’re leaving behind is as important as what lies ahead.
When we first meet seven-year-old Dolly, she immediately grabs us with a voice that is both precocious and effervescent. It has been a while since her dad has … that is both precocious and effervescent. It has been a while since her dad has spent time with her, just the two of them, and so when he scoops her up and promises to take her on the adventure of a lifetime, Dolly is thrilled.
The first days on the road are incredibly exciting. Every pit stop promises a new delight for Dolly and her favourite plastic horse, Clemesta, who she’s brought along for the adventure. There are milkshakes, shopping sprees, a theme park, and all the junk food she isn’t allowed to eat under her mother’s watchful eye. And, for the first time, she has her father’s attention all to herself. But as they travel farther south, into a country Dolly no longer recognizes, her dad’s behavior grows increasingly erratic. He becomes paranoid and irresponsible, even a little scary. The adventure isn’t fun anymore, but home is ever further away. And Dolly isn’t sure if she’ll ever get back.
A compulsively readable work of psychological suspense from the first mile to the last, All the Lost Things introduces a remarkable young heroine who leaps off the page, charts a life-changing journey, and ultimately reveals the sometimes heartbreaking intersections of love, truth, and memory.
Dolly’s dad, Joseph Rust, tells Dolly they are going on an adventure. Dolly grabs her toy, Clemesta, a plastic horse, who also is Dolly’s conscience, and is excited for the adventure with her Dad. Clemesta and Dolly “speak” to each other, and Dolly gains confidence from Clemesta. After a few days on the road, and amidst Clemesta’s warnings, Dolly starts suspecting that they aren’t really on an adventure, and she wants her Mom.
Told from the perspective of a 7 year old, with memories of words overheard, and a big imagination, this is a story of desperation, anguish, and the love between a child and her father.
This book is a unique read. It takes a very skilled writer immersed in the voice of the characters to pull off what Sacks pulled off in this novel—telling the story from start to finish from the perspective of a seven-year-old. This is a suspense novel for those who love soap operas—more family drama than suspense, but with all the fixings of a good kidnapping novel.
This book gets one knife for violence. Altogether, this is a fairly clean read. All violence is off screen and intentionally ignored by the narrator for most of the book. That said, if you’re sensitive to mentions of domestic abuse, be careful reading this book.
I’d give this book five stars for incredible writing, characterization, and plot. It’s a slow-burn suspense, and the first half of the book is more fun and lighthearted as Dolly pretends the bad stuff never happened.
Thoughts:
This is an incredibly unique read. It takes a highly skilled writer to maintain an accurate voice of a seven-year-old narrator from start to finish, and to make a road trip where most of the time is spent in the back seat of a car with a toy horse interesting to read.
The suspense begins to ramp up about halfway through the book, and it doesn’t slow down after that. But even with a less suspenseful start, the plot’s mystery and the dramatic irony was enough to pull me through until I couldn’t put it down.
Dolly is an incredibly lovable character, in large part because of how she represents childhood. She has word slips and sporadic trains of thoughts and snippets of memory that reveal the drama of her home life bit by bit all the way up until the end. Some may feel this makes the story disjointed, but the longer I read in Dolly’s voice the more I got used to her thought patterns and was able to anticipate the narrative flow, which made it easier and easier to read as the book went along.
As a trigger warning, this book is a family drama fraught with memories of domestic violence and the conflicting feelings of a daughter toward her abusive father. It’s a picture of how abusive situations can slip through the cracks until it’s too late, and a depiction of how many kids learn to cope with trauma.
Read my full review on my blog: https://www.authorjjhanna.com/post/book-review-all-the-lost-things-by-michelle-sacks