The Lost Ones

A Novel

By: Sheena Kamal

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

A BUSTLE BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH

TIME MAGAZINE SUMMER READ RECOMMEND

Finalist for the International Thriller Writers, Strand Critics, and Barry Award for Best First Novel

""A brave, unflinching heroine and brave, unflinching writing add up to an extraordinary debut--highly recommended.""--Lee Child

A dark, compulsively readable psychological suspense debut, the first in a new series featuring the brilliant, fearless, chaotic, and deeply flawed Nora Watts—a character as heartbreakingly troubled, emotionally complex, and irresistibly compelling as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander and Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole.

It begins with a phone call that Nora Watts has dreaded for fifteen years—since the day she gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Bonnie has vanished. The police consider her a chronic runaway and aren’t looking, leaving her desperate adoptive parents to reach out to her birth mother as a last hope.

A biracial product of the foster system, transient, homeless, scarred by a past filled with pain and violence, Nora knows intimately what happens to vulnerable girls on the streets. Caring despite herself, she sets out to find Bonnie with her only companion, her mutt Whisper, knowing she risks reopening wounds that have never really healed—and plunging into the darkness with little to protect her but her instincts and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies.

The search uncovers a puzzling conspiracy that leads Nora on a harrowing journey of deception and violence, from the gloomy rain-soaked streets of Vancouver, to the icy white mountains of the Canadian interior, to the beautiful and dangerous island where she will face her most terrifying demon. All to save a girl she wishes had never been born.

This book bowled me over!

Saw a TikTok by the author so took a chance to try the book & dang!! I am SO glad I did and can’t wait to read her other books! The characters are interesting, complex, gritty & real that I couldn’t help become invested in them. The locations and their descriptions (as someone from Metro Vancouver who just came back from a vacation to Vancouver Island) are so immersive and accurate that it felt like watching a movie in my mind - I could see it all so clearly. Add to that the plot & so many real pieces, the author crafts a puzzle which once it comes together was utterly stunning. I was on the edge of my seat and (without exaggeration) weeping by the end. It didn’t feel slick, lacquered & tied up with a bow. It felt REAL. Like being WITH Nora as she experienced everything… with more and more of her character making sense as if peeling layers off an onion. I ended this novel wanting more, and not in an annoyed way. So glad to have gotten this novel and can’t wait to read more!!

Would make a great movie!

I could not stop listening to this one!
The story gradually gets better and better by the minute. Loved the unexpected turns of event & suspense as the narrator took us along Nora's journey to find her missing biological child.
It will make a good movie.

Best Narrator

Bahni Turpin telling the story made it believable, without her reading I don't think I would have stuck to completing the book.

Not exactly what I thought it would be

I was expecting something completely different then what I got. The ending seemed rushed to me and not well thought out. Just not my cup of tea.

Just ok...

Never really got into the story. Something about the characters never really gelled for me. Individually, they were somewhat interesting, but they didn’t fit well together. Bahni Turpin was phenomenal as usual, and saved the story for me. The ending, while emotionally and psychologically plausible, was dissatisfying.