Fiction, Magical realism, NetGalley, Retro

How To NOT Find A Spark In A Brilliantly Set Up Story The Finding of Martha Lost by Caroline Wallace

We need to talk about how I found myself feeling about The Finding of Martha Lost. Cause I for sure am not lost about how I feel about this book.

You could say I am finding myself with quite a strong opinion.

Enough of the puns! Let’s talk straight here.

This book had me hyped up about it ever since I got approved for it on NetGalley. It offered a wonderful premise: Martha was found in an abandoned suitcase in a train station, grew up there, and needs to find out who she is, as time is pressing. Secrets, trains and unicorns.

Okay, maybe not the unicorns so much.

This book had so much potential! Books, secret underground libraries, lost and found items, trains. And when I say secret underground libraries, I mean rainbow sorted libraries of lost books with dedications, spiral staircases and forgotten histories in a train station. God!

And yet. I just didn’t like it.

And it makes me sad I didn’t like it!
I super duper guilt tripped myself for not liking it SO MANY TIMES!!

I mean. Being a book worm, HOW can you not like the thought of secret libraries? TRAINS? I do feel like a failed bookworm now…

However, I have to say. Martha, the main character, was just… too daft. Too crazy. Too silly. There is a big difference between being cute and naive, and just being… unrealistic. And it’s not just the main character. The choices everyone makes in this book… I struggle to find words for it. Let me present you with some examples.

Throughout the book, the main problem Martha has is that if she doesn’t procure certain documents concerning herself, she will be evicted.

So, the normal course of action here would be, probably, to go to a certain government office and apply for them.

Now, I do understand that Martha is 16, a little bit naive and constantly abused by her insane fanatically religious mother, but.

Writing posters and leaving them on the walls of the train station for a mysterious stranger to find does not seem like a solution?? You do not hope strangers who send you books will come up with your National Insurance number? You also do not just do nothing for 30 days or so and hope it will somehow resolve?? More than that! If it was just Martha… But it really wasn’t. Gonna just spoiler-tag this. All the others just stare at her when she makes the worst decisions ever? Sort of even when thugs show up in her office with weapons? Or even when she nearly gets in trouble with a total douche who’s 20 years older??

There are other things. I can get behind unicorns and fairytales, gosh, I read Ben Aaronovitch, but this… Martha can apparently close her eyes and see how the things she finds got lost? There are all these other things about her, like how she needs to drag a rock with herself when she leaves the station, cause at 16 years old she still thinks the station will crumble if she leaves, cause her mother told her a story when she was a kid?

That, and then there’s the guy who’s dressed like a Roman soldier. Okay, so later there is an explanation, but I’m all just like:


Now if you don’t get that GIF, it’s totally your fault.

So all this, coming from the person who LIKES stories about fairies and unicorns. But the problem with this was that it was… neither reality, NOR fairies and unicorns. It should have just gone one way or the other.

So, I feel like a super old and boring person right now, but it’s just a NO. And believe me, I’m the one who’s most disappointed by this, this was supposed to be an awesome book! I am still going to give it 3 stars, cause I think it’s mostly me, and also because the ending was kind of sweet. But my bullshit meter is just beeping too loud.

Thank you to Transworld and Caroline Wallace for providing a copy for review in exchange to my honest opinion. Too bad the opinion wasn’t too good, huh 🙁

Have you read anything by Caroline Wallace? And how do you deal with naive MCs?