Launch Week! Give it Up for Heather Young and The Lost Girls!

I have the great honor of kicking off Heather Young’s launch week, celebrating the publication of her debut novel THE LOST GIRLS.

But before I tell you about THE LOST GIRLS, I just want to say what a joy it has been to share this year with Heather. She is one of the funniest people I have ever met, and she never fails to make me laugh at myself. She is the friend you go to when you want to “go there”—into your deepest fears and anxieties—and she will always meet you with a self-deprecating story, an outrageous suggestion and an excellent drink idea. She is extraordinarily generous with herself and her experience, and she has a way of making you laugh through the tears. I’m so happy to have met her, and to have walked the cuckoo, crazy-making and joy-filled path of publishing your first book beside her.

Now, lets talk THE LOST GIRLS. I loved this book. It is so many things at once—a mystery, a meditation on sisterhood and the ways our families deeply affect us, and the way that community can shape us. Told both in the past and the present, with the addition of a journal in the near present that reminisces about the past, Young takes our hands and skillfully weaves us through time, allowing the reader to gather the pieces of the mystery on her own. It is such a satisfying story, the way it slowly, carefully, creepily unfolds. I put this book down in awe of Young. She is such a subtle, elegant, evocative storyteller. The characters are so finely drawn, the plot so carefully laid that you never see the trail, but you trust the path completely. And her prose is just gorgeous.THE LOST GIRLS quietly crept its way into my heart, where it will live for a long time.

Now, if you don’t believe me, believe The New York Times, who reviewed THE LOST GIRL in the Sunday Book section!

My biggest and warmest congratulations to Heather! Now, everyone, go read THE LOST GIRLS!