​Review of Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

​Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash is a novel that follows the Flynn family through strange and ridiculous situations involving the three daughters, Abigail, Harper, and Louise. The mother, Catherine, begins an affair with their neighbor after the father, Bud, has become a lackluster companion. His job as a port accountant for the richest man in town is boring and as he learns of his wife’s infidelity his job tells him to join a group at the church for wandering souls called Lost Lambs. All while this is happening, one of the daughters is messaging a man online who goads her into creating a bomb for a beauty pageant, another is dating a security guard for the richest man in town, and the third is so smart she begins to believe that there is a ship that goes missing from Bud’s accounting. Bud begins to have an affair with the leader of Lost Lambs to get back at Catherine. He also takes his job more seriously, following the tip of his daughter, and realizes that a yearly shipment is always redacted from the records. When he begins to look into it further, the rich man, Paul Alabaster, personally pays him off. The other sister, Abigail, falls so much in love with her security guard boyfriend that when she gets an invitation to the Alabaster mansion, she believes her boyfriend will be there. It turns out that she was brought to the mansion so that Alabaster could take her blood to revitalize himself age-wise. It happens at an annual party that has an Eyes Wide Shut vibe where very rich and powerful men drink the blood of young girls, namely the girls that were trafficked in the redacted shipments. Though, the other two sisters find out this is happening and bust in with the boyfriend to rescue their sister and the trafficked girls. In the end, Paul Alabaster gets by unscathed but the girls are able to be free.
 
Lost Lambs has an insane plot and smaller subplots that are so ridiculous and intertwined it’s amazing at how they can all fit within one novel. The details themselves are so specific and strange and striking. Take for example the neighbor’s ceramic vaginas, or Tibet the character being named after where she was conceived. There is one really cool syntactic thing Cash does, which is that in the story a church is overrun by gnats. And those gnats aren’t just referenced, but stuck themselves into the language. So instead of, say, “nation”, the story would say, “gnation”. In effect creating an annoyance on the page similar to the infestation the church was facing. Then when the church is fumigated, this intentional misspelling disappears. It’s details like that that make Lost Lambs so engaging. That and the voice, which has this sarcastic and dry humor that teases the characters and situations. Such a fun read!
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5