Review: The Lost by Cole McCade (Crow City #1)
Note: This ARC was provided by RockStar Lit PR via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
how do you know me so well?
Gabriel lingered, studying the page, then tugged the pen from her fingers and wrote below it in bold, messy letters.
Maybe I've always known you. And we were just waiting to be found.
Leigh traced her fingers over the writing, feeling the faint indentations in the paper, reading each letter like braille. "I don't understand how you can know me and still want me."
"I don't understand how you can know yourself and think I wouldn't."
There are those books that demand your attention and once you start reading them, there's not much on God's green earth that could pull you away. Author Cole McCade's The Lost, the first in his Crow City series, is one such book. The story is complex and the author is more than honest about the possibility of triggers being found in his latest work, what with a well-worded warning before you begin reading the tale of Clarissa Leigh van Zandt. Don't go into this book expecting hearts and flowers because you won't get them. What you will get is an exceptionally well-written and often gut-wrenching story about a woman living with a void in her life, one that she tries to fill with anonymous trysts with random partners. Who she is now isn't the woman she was four years ago nor is she the girl she was at eighteen; she is the evolving result of her experiences but she is still missing pieces of herself, caught between being Clarissa and Leigh.
I've refrained from giving details about the story because this is a story that you really need to experience fully and with an open mind. There were times that I could feel my heart pounding, wanting to put my e-reader down and step away mentally and emotionally, because of certain events in Leigh's life that were both harrowing and traumatizing. But Leigh is a female lead character like no other I've come across before. Yes, she is dysfunctional and many would probably have at least one psychological term labeled on her forehead. But she's also a survivor, one who has risen time and again, dealing with the circumstances in her own unconventional way. She refuses to drag anyone else down with her, alienating those who try to get close, but then she's never met anyone like former Marine Gabriel Hart, who himself has a myriad of issues he's dealing with. As individuals, they're far from ideal, but together, they do somehow make sense.
This was my first Cole McCade read and what an introduction to his gift for storytelling this was. You can't help but feel as if you're right there experiencing everything Leigh is, both the good, which seemed few and far between, and the bad, which she seemed to be all to familiar with. Both Leigh and Gabriel are far from perfect and they're more than aware that they're somewhat broken, though I prefer to think of them as works in progress. What's considered broken can be repaired but it'll never be the way it once was nor should you expect it to be, which is what Leigh and Gabriel are. They both lost their innocence and naivete in ways that would have brought weaker people to their knees and kept them down, but these two have a resilience to them, keeping hope alive even as they hit rock bottom time and again. The Lost is by no means an easy or comfortable read, but it is unequivocally a more than worthwhile one. Five-plus stars. ♥
Date Read: 31 August 2015
Learn more about Cole McCade here.
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