Lost to Alice is a gripping coming-of-age novel set in the Rocky Mountains, following Aria as she’s thrown into a new life with her cousins after her parents’ tragic death. The story explores grief, love, identity, mental health, and the unforgiving pressure of growing up in a small town brimming with secrets. Through her new friendships and romantic entanglement with Chase, Aria finds herself entangled in drug deals, suicide, abuse, and deep-rooted trauma, all while navigating the treacherous terrain of high school. The plot crescendos with brutal emotional weight as one loss triggers others, and the fragile connections between the characters threaten to unravel.

From the first chapter, I was hooked. The writing has a raw, unpolished quality that works. It mirrors the chaos and roughness of the lives it’s portraying. Aria’s voice is incredibly real. Her inner monologues felt like the thoughts I might have scribbled in my journal as a teen, full of rage, heartache, and sarcasm. I appreciated how the story didn’t sanitize grief or teenage pain. The characters aren’t clean-cut heroes. They’re messy, flawed, sometimes deeply unlikeable, but that’s what makes them compelling. The pacing occasionally jumped, and a few transitions felt abrupt, but I never wanted to stop reading.

Emotionally, this book gutted me. I felt every loss like a punch to the chest. Miguel’s suicide hit me the hardest because of how complicated it was. Nobody is innocent, and the book doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. It forces the reader to sit with the weight of words and the consequences of silence. I loved Chase and Aria’s chemistry, their softness blooming in the middle of such dark, violent lives. But I also wanted to scream at them sometimes, which is what made them feel real. And Jonah? God, Jonah just felt like a walking wound. The ending wasn’t tied up in a neat bow, and I’m glad for that. It honored the pain the characters went through without pretending everything would be okay tomorrow.

Lost to Alice is a story for anyone who remembers how hard it is to be young, or who is living through that hell right now. It’s for people who have lost someone and were never the same afterward. It’s for kids who are angry, tired, and trying not to drown. I’d recommend it to readers of Thirteen Reasons Why, Looking for Alaska, or Girl in Pieces.

Pages: 288 | ISBN: 1948807793