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    Fragments of the Lost
    Fragments of the Lost
    Fragments of the Lost
    Audiobook9 hours

    Fragments of the Lost

    Written by Megan Miranda

    Narrated by Erin Spencer

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls and The Perfect Stranger comes a suspenseful psychological mystery about one girl's search to uncover the truth behind her ex-boyfriend's death. Perfect for fans of We Were Liars and 13 Reasons Why.

    Jessa Whitworth knew she didn't belong in her ex-boyfriend Caleb's room. But she couldn't deny that she was everywhere--in his photos, his neatly folded T-shirts, even the butterfly necklace in his jeans pocket . . . the one she gave him for safe keeping on that day.

    His mother asked her to pack up his things--even though she blames Jessa for his accident. How could she say no? And maybe, just maybe, it will help her work through the guilt she feels about their final moments together.

    But as Jessa begins to box up the pieces of Caleb's life, they trigger memories that make Jessa realize their past relationship may not be exactly as she remembered. And she starts to question whether she really knew Caleb at all. 

    Each fragment of his life reveals a new clue that propels Jessa to search for the truth about Caleb's accident. What really happened on the storm-swept bridge?

    Praise for Megan Miranda's All the Missing Girls:
    "This thriller's all of your fav page-turners (think: Luckiest Girl Alive, The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl) rolled into one." --TheSkimm

    "Fast-paced and frightening." --Refinery29

    "[The] perfect read for thriller fans." --Bustle
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateNov 14, 2017
    ISBN9780525532477
    Author

    Megan Miranda

    Megan Miranda is the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, The Perfect Stranger, The Last House Guest, which was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, The Girl from Widow Hills, Such a Quiet Place, The Last to Vanish, The Only Survivors, and Daughter of Mine. She has also written several books for young adults. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from MIT, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. Follow @MeganLMiranda on X and Instagram, @AuthorMeganMiranda on Facebook, or visit MeganMiranda.com.

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    Reviews for Fragments of the Lost

    3.5/5

    33 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Caleb is dead; killed going through the guardrail of a bridge during a flash flood. Is Jessa to blame for his death? Was he upset when he left during the track meet? Did they argue due to their recent break up? This is what most people think, and even Jessa begins to wonder about how much of what people are saying is true, so she needs to find out more, find out why he left the meet, find out why he took her lucky necklace when she asked him to hold it for her as if they were still together. Thus begins her search for answers. When Caleb's mother asks Jessa to sort out Caleb's things and pack them up to be sold or donated, Jessa sees an opportunity to find some answers.
      This story contains a very good mystery with puzzling clues that lead to more puzzling clues before the solution to the mystery is revealed. However, too much of the early part of the book is spent with Jessa going though Caleb's things and questioning everything about their relationship as well as slowly dissecting her grief over his death. The book is broken into three parts with the real mystery beginning in part two, well past the first two thirds of the book. This would have been a sensational book had it been shorter with a tighter story line. Overall though, worth the read.
    • 4/5
      A different type of story. Enjoyable and also a bit unbelievable. Second chances? Yes please. So many obvious "clues" left? Not likely.
    • 3/5
      Review of Advance Reader’s Copy

      After Caleb Evers drives his car off a bridge during a storm, Jessa Whitworth finds herself helping his mother, Eve, by packing up the things in her ex-boyfriend’s bedroom. The only problem is that, as Jessa uncovers tantalizing clues about Caleb’s life, she begins to find discrepancies between them and the boy she thought she knew. Now she wonders if she ever really knew him at all. What really happened on the bridge? Perhaps it wasn’t an accident at all . . . .

      The main characters are well-developed, the intriguing plot twisted and filled with surprises. Relentless Jessa is almost-to-a-fault stubborn, but readers will cheer for her to succeed in her search for the truth even though the early chapters give readers no reason to accept her belief that there was something untoward about Caleb. And what’s with creepy mother Eve and her persistent checking on Jessa as she boxes up things in Caleb’s bedroom?

      Throughout the early chapters of this narrative, there’s an undercurrent of despair weaving its traumatic preoccupation with loss through every word on every page. If you’re a parent who has lost a child or a teen who has lost a brother or sister, it's mind-numbingly, overwhelmingly difficult to wade through. It’s what accounts for dozens of attempts to read this story [but always putting it aside] before finally making it through these agonizing early chapters.

      Then, as the story unfolds, that undercurrent morphs into a mystery and it becomes a puzzle with too many missing pieces, creating a barrage of questions to buffer the earlier despair. As the puzzle becomes more complex, the mystery evolves into a “What if . . .” that changes everything the readers think they know.

      Although it makes for difficult reading, one of the strengths of the narrative is its continual exploration of the thoughts and feelings of Caleb’s friends as each, in his or her own way, deals with his loss and the surprising conundrum that has suddenly enveloped the accident. As the story evolves into one of “the more we learn, the less we know,” readers will find it difficult to set the book aside before turning the final page.

      Although teens and young adults are the targeted audiences for this book, readers who enjoy mystery and suspense will find much to appreciate here.

      Recommended.
    • 4/5
      The story has aspects of a psychological autopsy, coupled with poignant moments when things Jessa finds trigger vivid memories. Part grieving, part mystery, part coming of age, it is far better as an audio than in print. Narrator Erin Spencer does a stellar job of pulling you in and letting you imagine nearly every moment.
    • 3/5
      A special thank you to Crown Books for Young Readers and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

      So perhaps you all remember that I read and reviewed Megan Miranda’s novel “All the Missing Girls”, and I wasn’t very impressed with it beyond the framing of it. But I was intrigued enough by her as a writer that I knew I’d probably pick up something else she had written in the future. That book happened to be “Fragments of the Lost”, a new YA psychological thriller by her. I saw that it was available on NetGalley, and decided to request it. When I finally got to reading it, I figured that I would start it one evening and make my way through, as I did with “All the Missing Girls”. But lo and behold, I actually sat down and read it in one sitting. So you know that we’re off to a pretty good start when THAT happens.

      I think that what grabbed me about this book right away was Jessa, our main character. She’s a girl who has gone through the awful trauma of losing her ex-boyfriend Caleb after his car is thought to have gone off a cliff during a rainstorm and flood. She’s believable in that she has mixed feelings about cleaning out Caleb’s room, as they had broken up before his car went off the cliff on that rainy day. She was a very down to earth and realistic person, never treading into the realm of simpering or frustrating in her emotions. Which is funny, because I fully prepared myself for her to be the kind of wreck that Nicolette was in “All the Missing Girls”, and yet it was in the YA novel that Miranda’s main character was bit more nuanced. As she cleans up Caleb’s room, we get to see their relationships through flashbacks, depending on the object that she is sorting in the moment. While it had ample chances to become schmaltzy, it never did because Jessa is that well rounded and complex of a character. As for the other characters, we really only got to see them through Jessa’s eyes, so it was harder to get a gauge of who they were. I think that you certainly can give readers a handle on other characters through a main character filter, but I didn’t feel like we completely got there with Jessa. While I really liked her, everyone else was fairly bland. Caleb was really just this enigmatic good person that we didn’t really get to know beyond this plotline, and while I did like their mutual friend Max, a sweet geeky kind of guy, he was really just there to provide support to Jessa through thick and thin, no matter what. I liked him and I liked how he interacted with her, but he was just there for the ride and showing up when needed.

      The mystery was solid enough, and I liked that we were given the pieces as Jessa boxed up his room. From a pair of spare glasses to a broken fan to some sporting equipment, we learn bit by bit what Caleb was like, what his relationship with Jessa was like, and why perhaps none of it was as real as she thought it was. I think that had it stopped there, and been an examination about young love lost, the different sides of people even in relationships, and why we may never know everything about them, this would have been a pretty powerful book. But while the mystery was solid (as to what actually happened to Caleb that day), I think that it may have actually hindered an already powerful narrative. That isn’t to say that Miranda had to write a book that was solely a meditation on grief and loss, because it’s her prerogative to write a mystery and I say have at it. Hell, this mystery was interesting to follow and I liked it enough. But along with it, we started to get into areas that kind of pulled me out of the story because of how unrealistic things were. It was mostly little things, like how a library computer would probably NEVER have search history that went between sign in sessions because of privacy laws, or how it would take a whole lot more than just a fake ID to completely restart your life as a new person. These may not seem like much, but it was enough to take me out of the story even for a little while, which was distracting. There was also a sudden shift in solution in the end, and you all know how I feel about that kind of thing. When I’m told that only options A and B are going to work, I have a really hard time swallowing a sudden option C rearing it’s ugly, if not convenient head.

      “Fragments of the Lost” was a twisty turny read, though, and I think that it’s one of the stronger YA thriller/mysteries that I’ve read this year. Meg Miranda should definitely write more for this audience, as she brings the nuance that is needed to write an effective whodunit.