Let's Get Lost

When I was at BEA in May, they had a really cute Volkswagon Slug-Bug car decorated to match the cover of the book Let's Get Lost. I'm sad to say, their marketing stunt totally worked on me. Even though they ran out of ARCs at the expo, I was able to get an e-book copy through NetGalley, and just had to read it. While it's nothing super Earth-shatteringly good, it's a decent read that all ties together really well in the end. I'm glad I picked it up.



Let's Get Lost Summary:
Five strangers. Countless adventures. One epic way to get lost.

Four teens across the country have only one thing in common: a girl named LEILA. She crashes into their lives in her absurdly red car at the moment they need someone the most.

There's HUDSON, a small-town mechanic who is willing to throw away his dreams for true love. And BREE, a runaway who seizes every Tuesday—and a few stolen goods along the way. ELLIOT believes in happy endings…until his own life goes off-script. And SONIA worries that when she lost her boyfriend, she also lost the ability to love.


Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia find a friend in Leila. And when Leila leaves them, their lives are forever changed. But it is during Leila's own 4,268-mile journey that she discovers the most important truth— sometimes, what you need most is right where you started. And maybe the only way to find what you're looking for is to get lost along the way.

Let's Get Lost Review:
One thing I really liked about this book is that it's told from five different points of view, spread throughout five different sections of the book. But the main character's point-of-view isn't introduced until the end. So for the first eighty percent of the book, you know the main character is Leila, because she's the only common character among each of the four sections, but it's all about the other characters' perceptions of Leila's. We're not able to hear anything from Leila herself until the very last portion of the book. And I liked it. It's a novel concept, and I think Adi Alsaid is a genius for doing it.

The first section of the book begins with a boy who is romantically interested in Leila, so at first I was prepared for a romance novel, but I was way off. There are romantic elements dispersed throughout the novel, but that's not really the main focus. Alsaid definitely struck a good balance in that regard. She also did a really good job with character development. It's hard to develop a character and tell their whole story in fifty or so pages, but it was very well done. All of the characters were very real and relatable.

I also loved that throughout the whole book, you're left wondering what Leila's story is. She goes out of her way to help all four of the characters she meets along her journey, and you can tell she's not really concerned about getting where she's going very quickly, but you don't know why she's doing the things she's doing. To be honest, I wasn't sure I was ever going to find out what her story was.

But Alsaid devoted the last section to Leila's point-of-view, and readers finally learn what Leila's story is. And I really loved the surprise of it. Once you figure out her story, so many things that happened earlier in the book made sense. I knew there was something special about her story, but I never would have guessed it, and I totally appreciate the surprise of it all. If you're looking for a quick, fun read with deeper thematic elements laced throughout, make sure to pick this one up.