The Lost Night
What really happened the night Edie died? Ten years later, her best friend Lindsay will learn how unprepared she is for the truth.
In 2009, Edie had New York’s social world in her thrall. Mercurial and beguiling, she was the shining star of a group of recent graduates living in a Brooklyn loft and treating the city like their playground. When Edie’s body was found near a suicide note at the end of a long, drunken night, no one could believe it. Grief, shock, and resentment scattered the group and brought the era to an abrupt end.
A decade later, Lindsay has come a long way from the drug-addled world of Calhoun Lofts. She has devoted best friends, a cozy apartment, and a thriving career as a magazine’s head fact-checker. But when a chance reunion leads Lindsay to discover an unsettling video from that hazy night, she starts to wonder if Edie was actually murdered—and, worse, if she herself was involved. As she rifles through those months in 2009—combing through case files, old technology, and her fractured memories—Lindsay is forced to confront the demons of her own violent history to bring the truth to light.
Genre: Contemporary mystery/thriller
Author: Andrea Bartz
Hardcover, 314 pages
Publishing Date: February 26th, 2019
Publishing House: Crown
ISBN: 0525574719 (ISBN13: 9780525574712)
My Review
The Lost Night is a contemporary mystery thriller with unapologetically flawed and relatable characters starting their careers after graduation and living up a vivid partly live.
A group of friends in NYC comprised of all dynamics is making the best of the party scene around in their free time. Despite their varied personalities, they are connected one way or another and have been through thick and thin. But not everything is rosy all the time.
Lindsay has a long history of difficulties that stem from her diagnosis of ADHD in her teens and her difficult trials and errors with medication and 'fitting in' in society. Her story is candidly explored throughout the book in her own words via flashbacks. Living with a very difficult and overachieving dad and her timid mom, she's been thought of to not succeed in life.
Edie is her best friend. She is different from Lindsay, she's a social butterfly. The two of them are like Ying and Yang. It's not always perfect, but their friendship has lasted through times of trouble with parents, boys, booze, and drugs.
After another wild night, Lindsay has suffered a blackout. She can't remember but bits of the previous night and wakens to horrible news. Her friend Edie committed suicide. With the media running their spiel and the funeral processions under way, Lindsay is confronted with photographs, videos and a lack of memory from the night to understand what happened and why?
Ten years pass by. Everyone in the group has moved on in their personal and professional lives when an old friend connects with Lindsay and starts a chain reaction of inquiries and questions in regards to the night Edie died.
As evil is masked in angelic disguise to use Lindsay, she is trying to put the pieces together that never really fit right about the suicide of her best friend. Tipped off to distract her, she thinks she can trust her old friends all have the same intentions in finding out what happened, but this tragic suicide turns into a murder investigation that almost costs Lindsay's life twice. By the time the truth is unveiled, it's not only her psyche that is battered but the physical wounds that let her pass away knowing the truth.
REMEMBER THIS. REMEMBER THIS. REMEMBER THIS.
What was it she was supposed to remember?
Finding herself in the rehabilitating care and accused of 'the secret truth' she must act to take charge. If only she could remember!
***
Andrea Bartz's debut novel comes through crashing the contemporary book scene with a sharp deliverance about a generation that grew up with the first waves of Adderal and other ADHD meds that was generously used in the early waves of the diagnosis hype reflecting the mid/late 90's. Speaking the language of the adult in their twenties and thirties today, it is a relatable story with tragic undertones and psychological suspense.
I felt that Lindsay's character reflected her given traits and struggles with ADHD, depression and the societal expectations/academics very well. Left with anxiety as an adult she has learned to somewhat manage life better and Bartz intuitively created her progression and struggles to make it to that point.
The mystery in itself was perhaps a bit drawn out with some filler material, but the psychological suspense towards the end of the book had my heart in a wringer.
In all, it was an engaging fast novel. I am not a reader of a lot of contemporary fiction and I felt I was above the targeted reader's age. I was an adult already when I witnessed the coming of the ADHD medication trend picking up in schools and I always wondered what the future health of the children looked like that underwent all those different therapies. For that alone, it was interesting to read a novel with the coming of age theme even in a fictional, imagined setting. My intuition leads me to think though, that Bartz knew enough about it to emphatically create these highs and lows of her main character to be so realistically portrayed.
I received a copy of this novel from the publisher on a Goodreads Giveaway. .
All opinions are my own.
Thank you!
