The Lovely and the Lost by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Kira Bennett’s earliest memories are of living alone and wild in the woods. She has no idea how long she was on her own or what she had to do to survive, but she remembers the moment that Cady Bennett and one of her search-and-rescue dogs found her perfectly. Adopted into the Bennett family, Kira still struggles with human interaction years later, but she excels at the family business: search-and-rescue. Along with Cady’s son, Jude, and their neighbor, Free, Kira works alongside Cady to train the world’s most elite search-and-rescue dogs. Someday, all three teenagers hope to put their skills to use, finding the lost and bringing them home.

But when Cady’s estranged father, the enigmatic Bales Bennett, tracks his daughter down and asks for her help in locating a missing child—one of several visitors who has disappeared in the Sierra Glades National Park in the past twelve months—the teens find themselves on the frontlines sooner than they could have ever expected. As the search through 750,000 acres of unbridled wilderness intensifies, Kira becomes obsessed with finding the missing child. She knows all too well what it’s like to be lost in the wilderness, fighting for survival, alone.

But this case isn’t simple. There is more afoot than a single, missing girl, and Kira’s memories threaten to overwhelm her at every turn. As the danger mounts and long-held family secrets come to light, Kira is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her adopted family, her true nature, and her past.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38136879-the-lovely-and-the-lost

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My Review: 4/5 Stars

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is amazing when it comes to young adult mysteries. They are always super intriguing, the characters are fantastic, and the mystery is always one that you don't send the end result coming. That's what makes a mystery for me. If you can solve it too early in the book, then that ruins the fun. I enjoy trying to figure it out and figuring it out just as our main character does. And Barnes does an excellent job of her mysteries. They aren't easy to solve and in the end they make sense. You don't sit there saying really? How is that possible? You get there saying no way!! And it has always been like that when I read her books. In Lovely and the Lost, Kira and her adopted family run a search-and-rescue dog team. Kira was found by her later adoptive mother, Cady, and her dog when she was child. Kira had survived living in the woods alone for weeks. To say it left some scars would be an understatement. But thanks to her adoptive mother, brother, neighbor, and trusted dogs, Kira found a way to survive each day as she overcomes the trauma she endured. When Cady is visited by her estranged father to help find a missing child, Kira and her little family find themselves in the center. But there is a whole lot more happening than finding a lost girl. Kira's flashbacks of her time in the woods are stirred up and truths about Cady's home and family are revealed. Loved reading this story. Like I said, it had a lot of good mysteries in it and I was hooked. Plus Barnes likes to throw in a last minute twist that has me yelling about cruel cliffhangers seeing as it is a standalone, but it just makes the book that much better.