Lost for Words by Alice Kuipers Review

All Sophie wants to do is forget. But it's not easy now that everything's changed. The house feels too big, school drags on for too long, lights are too bright, the room spins, and her hands get sweaty for no reason. And she can't remember why she was ever best friends with Abigail, who is obsessed with parties and boys. Only the new girl, Rosa-Leigh, with her prose poems and utter confidence, might understand. But talking to her seems impossible.

Lost in memories of the life she once had, Sophie retreats into herself. But there's only so long she can keep everything bottled up inside before she explodes. Maybe by confronting the tragedy of her past she'll figure out how to fix her future.

I admit, when I signed up for this ARC tour at Around the World Tours, I mostly picked it up for the cover; it's positively stunning. I glanced at the synopsis, and it sounded interesting, so I put my name down. It turns out this read was a little more than I bargained for.

The first half of the book was very, very tedious. We wait and wait and wait to learn what horrific thing could have shaken our main character, Sophie, so terribly that she's plagued by panic attacks and has trouble reaching out to her friends. But, really, you don't find out until the later chapters, which, although made sense with the story, wasn't my ideal for good pacing. While there were definitely some major events going on during the first part of the novel, it all felt like a foundation for the last few chapters, where everything started to pick up.

Besides the pacing issue, I felt that this was a very interesting read. Sophie was a wonderfully complicated character; she was very three-dimensional, and even relatable, despite what she had gone through. For the most part, she was easy to root for, even when she made decisions that I didn't approve of. By the end, I was exceptionally fond of her character, and had my fingers crossed her situation worked out well.

Although this definitely wasn't my favorite book of the year, it's definitely worth a read, if you have a little extra time on your hands.

Rating: 7.5/10

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