Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller

A book I picked up for free on impulse at The Bookthing of Baltimore (www.bookthing.org). It must have been nearly two years ago as that is the last time I can remember going there. So after I gave up on my last read and was struggling to find a book on my shelves that got my attention, the following synopsis from Amazon made this one jump into my hands to read.

A novel set in the vineyards of Northern California that tells the story of a young girl who, in the wake of a tragic accident, seeks solace in a damaging love affair with a much older man.

It was a well written book, I liked the authors style and it flowed very well. I found myself just having to keep on reading. The characters were well developed, believable and likeable (or unlikeable where that was the intention). Just the right number of characters and plots that made it an interesting read without being to cerebral. You know there is a "but" coming though!

But the story just was not the story I had anticipated from the information I had read about it. This may be my fault for forming a view on what I expected but don't we do that with all the books we read from the tidbits of the story on the cover!? I felt the story veered away from the above synopsis and concentrated more on another of the story lines, and while it was interesting in itself it was just not what I expected or wanted. I only realised this when I was about 50 pages from the end and the story of the "damaging love affair" had only really been a minor part of the book and was not fully developed, in my opinion.

Spoiler in this part:
I also did not get how Mark suddenly knew about Daisy and Duncan. It just seemed rather convenient to tie up the story. I also did not truly believe the Daisy/Duncan relationship (if, indeed, it could even be called that). What did Duncan get from it all?


In summary, it was a good book and will be well liked by many, I am sure, but it just did not deliver what it promised on the cover with the story. So it started as a 4 stars out of 5 but ended as a 3 for me. Xx