Summer of Lost and Found by Rebecca Behrens is a mystery adventure that a girl, Nell, has over the summer holidays when she reluctantly goes to Roanoke Island with her mother. A small place full of history isn’t the best place for a girl from New York to spend a vacation, especially when it means cancelling some exciting plans with her best friend.

But Nell soon finds the mystery and history of the ‘Lost Colony’, the early settlers who came there, interesting enough to set out looking for clues to find what happened to them. American history lessons are frequently weaved in the plot and, not being a history buff, I would have found it boring had it not been cleverly linked to the adventure that Nell has.

A young historical re-enactor, Ambrose, is there to help her in looking for the Lost Colony. As the story progresses, I didn’t like the way Nell’s character developed. Considering that she is the heroine, she should have been presented as more morally upright because a few things she does, just to solve the mystery, are not what one would expect from the lead character.

One of the main things that I found hard to take was Nell, having grown up around a museum because her mother works in one, actually steals an artefact from another museum while knowing well enough that it is totally wrong. Just because she and another local girl Lila, don’t get along and both are on the same mission doesn’t justify Nell accomplishing her mission by hook or by crook.

But I guess, this is the writer’s way of making her character more real by showing that people are prone to making an error in judgement and there are weaknesses in everyone.

The plot of Summer of Lost and Found is somewhat predictable but it is the narrative and atmosphere of the book that makes it an interesting reading.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 14th, 2018