Review: Lost and Found

Title: Lost and Found
Author: Jacqueline Sheehan
Pages: 278
Rating: 4/5

A poignant and unforgettable tale of love, loss, and moving on . . . with the help of one not-so-little dog

Rocky's husband Bob was just forty-two when she discovered him lying cold and lifeless on the bathroom floor . . . and Rocky's world changed forever. Quitting her job, chopping off all her hair, she leaves Massachusetts—reinventing her past and taking a job as Animal Control Warden on Peak's Island, a tiny speck off the coast of Maine and a million miles away from everything she's lost. She leaves her career as a psychologist behind, only to find friendship with a woman whose brain misfires in the most wonderful way and a young girl who is trying to disappear. Rocky, a quirky and fallible character, discovers the healing process to be agonizingly slow.

But then she meets Lloyd.

A large black Labrador retriever, Lloyd enters Rocky's world with a primitive arrow sticking out of his shoulder. And so begins a remarkable friendship between a wounded woman and a wounded, lovable beast. As the unraveling mystery of Lloyd's accident and missing owner leads Rocky to an archery instructor who draws her in even as she finds every reason to mistrust him, she discovers the life-altering revelation that grief can be transformed . . . and joy does exist in unexpected places (harpercollins.com).

I bought this book a few years ago based strickly on the cover.  I'm a sucker for any type of book that has to do with dogs and the black lab on the cover of this book is absolutely adorable.  However, like so many books it was pushed aside for other books that seemed to be more exciting, more interesting, or the it book of the moment.  When I was picking out my books to read this week from my TBR pile, this cover again caught my eye.  Once I read the description I was even more intrigued and moved it from the TBR pile to the I am reading now pile :)  I'm quite happy I did.

Rocky was a hard character to get to know, and it made the book a bit difficult to get into at first.  However, once I realized what her personality was like, and broke through the outer shell I flew through the rest of the pages.  Lost and Found is a book filled with grief, hope, tragedy and mystery.  All of these elements are molded together into one moving, beautiful story that pulled at my heart strings.  Of course my favorite character in the book was Lloyd, the beautiful, but injured, black lab that captures Rocky's heart.  There are three chapters in the book told from Lloyd's point of view and each chapter is more moving than the last.  It made me look at my two little doggies in a different light.  I only hope that they view me the way that Lloyd viewed Rocky.

I recommend this book to anyone who has a love for animals and is looking for a good strong story that will keep you turning pages long into the night.  I'll be looking for and definitely picking up Sheehan's newer book Now and Then in the coming weeks.  This is definitely a new "must read" author for me!