DNF at about 55%. I thought I would swoon over this novel but I found it very hard going and was not able to connect with the story or the characters. I'm glad lots of people enjoyed "The Lost Book," I was just not one of them.

First things first, I'm a sucker for a novel about a mysterious manuscript. In my dreams, I discover a mysterious manuscript that unveils a whole new world of possibility and prose. But, I digress.

Adana Moreau's first novel was a smash hit in the late 20s, and when she's penning her sequel, she falls ill.- and destroys the manuscript. Or does she? Decades later, a stranger discovers her manuscript and is determined to bring it back to the family it belongs to... in New Orleans, just as Katrina is about to hit.

With twists and turns, quirky characters, and plenty of hijinks, this book is an entertaining and endearing tale of the power of stories, words, and the places we call home.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin for advanced access to this title!

I loved the writing style and the mystical way the entire story felt throughout. It's one of those books that makes you want to start writing because you feel the power of the storytelling (and the story itself).

DNF @ 36%.
I have been really struggling with the writing style of this book. It is hard to follow the many stories within a story, especially when some do not seem to have any connection to the rest of the book. I feel like I have been constantly flipping back to try to figure out what is happening. The narration feels detached (especially in the first section, where nobody is named) and the lack of quotation marks makes it even harder to follow the stories. I tried the audiobook and that helped a little bit, but overall this book just isn't working for me.

I've seen reviews from people who felt similarly at this point of the novel, and it does not seem like they changed their mind after reading the whole book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hanover Square Press for the e-copy for review.

DNF @ 25%

I really tried to get in to this one (multiple times) - I don't like DNFing books, but I just couldn't. There was no real punch in the beginning and normally I can convince myself to push through to gain some sort of attachment to the characters, but it never came and the writing style just didn't jive with me.

I could definitely see it working for some, just not for me.

Instead of talking about the book, I'll talk about my experience reading it. I read the first section, a heavily magical realism-influenced section, about a young Dominicana who escapes the revolution on her island in the early 20th century and makes her way to New Orleans with the help of a pirate. She has a young son named Maxwell. She also teaches herself to read with the aid of one of the city's librarians and then begins to write. She loves old gothic, science fiction and horror novels by the likes of Collins, Wells, Shelley and Lovecraft, and her book is influenced by all of them. She writes a trippy novel about war, about exile, about multiple worlds, and the book is a success, even if it is written by a woman. Then she writes a sequel which doesn't see the light of day before she dies and the book is lost (as per the title). So, this woman is apparently Adana Moreau, but she doesn't even get a name in this whole part of the book, and neither does her pirate husband. Why not???

At this point, I put the book down. Magical realism is not my jam, and I was irritated by the namelessness of the Dominicana. The whole thing felt like more of a summary of a story than a story itself, and was very detached and dreamy. I'd read more than 50 pages and felt justified.

But then I also felt just a little guilty and I picked the book up again. This time, we're pretty much in the present. A young man named Saul has just returned to Chicago, where he works in a hotel with each room named for a different god of travel, from his grandfather's funeral in Israel. Saul loves to read, and there are lovingly compiled lists of favorite books of his and his grandfather's. At this point, I thought to myself "Oh, this is a book about books!" and thought I'd read some more. Especially since some of the treasure books are science fiction, an overlooked genre (by literary authors) that is my favorite. Saul reads "Solaris", he reads some Philip K. Dick, and I'm sure there are allusions to the themes in these books later. BUT- the author started wandering dreamily off again. There's a friend of Saul's who we get some random backstory for. I know we're going to travel in time in this book again, and maybe multiverses will also come into play, but at this point I am bored. I'm bored of the author's depiction of puckish young men. I'm bored of coming in and out of focus of the details (past and present) of their lives. Philip K. Dick this author is not, and he's not holding my attention. Although I love books too, and the idea of multiverses, and the attention to Latin America instead of North America and Europe being where all the important things take place, I don't love characters who aren't old enough to be as interesting as the author thinks they are and I don't love weird backstories for their own sake. I put the book down again. And this time, I just didn't want to pick it back up- two strikes was enough. I did do a bit of skimming, things looked like a tale of adventure for yet another young man finding himself, and I was happy enough to be done with it.

One of the best books I've read in recent memory. Love the overlapping stories and wonderful characters. This book really had a lot to say about life and how the choices you make really affect your life.

Review posted at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr260928

Michael Zapata's joyous debut is a novel that's all about the power and magic of storytelling.
In the 1920s, Adana Moreau, a Dominican immigrant living in New Orleans, begins writing a gloriously strange science fiction novel titled Lost City. The plot follows a teenage Dominican girl—not too dissimilar from the author herself—who is escaping an apocalyptic world overrun by zombies in search of a golden eternal city set on a parallel Earth. Lost City soon gains cult status thanks to its heady mix of pulpy narrative, philosophical and political enquiry, and avant-garde exploration into parallel world theories. A sequel is greatly anticipated. However, before Adana can finish the follow-up, A Model Earth, she falls terminally ill. In a bid to protect her artistic legacy, or perhaps in a state of feverish delusion, Adana destroys the only existing manuscript in a fire with the help of her young son Maxwell

Thank you, NetGalley and Harlequin, for a complimentary copy of this book! This review reflects my personal opinion.

I had a hard time coming up with a description of my feelings about this book. Thankfully, another reviewer mentioned exactly what I felt was off for me in the book: <i>"Written entirely in omniscient third person past tense narrative with little quoted dialogue, the coldly remote observer style loses readers as the author moves omnisciently between time, place, and character."</i> (Todd Stocklager) I honestly got lost a lot. There was hardly any real dialogue and that made it hard for me to identify with the characters or at least feel some kind of connection to them. The story itself was great and unique. I loved the combination of sci-fi, a bit of fantasy, history, and contemporary. However, the implementation of the concept was not for me.

This story was so rich and beautifully told, it made a perfect escapist read during these crazy times, I can't wait to share it.

I love the blend of sci - fi and history. Parallel universes and books lost in time? Sign me up. I found the text structure to be confusing, and detracted from my overall enjoyment.

I had a difficult time getting into this title. I thought the writing was quite good, but the discordant sections didn't coalesce into something that satisfied me. I see why this book has garnered high praise and I think it might be for some people, but it is not for me.

When I first picked up this book I thought it was going to be about an adventure where a young man searches for his grandmother's missing book. Surely when it opened up with The Last Black Pirate of the New World and love across parallel universes I thought I knew which direction this book was going. I was captivated by the story line and mesmerized by Zapata's writing. But I was oh so wrong. This is not just a book about a book. It is not a mere journey for a long lost treasure. <b>The Lost Book of Adana Moreau</b> looks at our response to disaster. Hurricane Katrina. The Russian Revolution. The US Occupation of the Dominican Republic. The Great Depression.
Moreover, the book examines displacement from different angles. Displacement of people from a natural disaster. Displacement by imperialism. Displacement from religious persecution. How do nations respond to catastrophe and how does this affect the everyday man. What Zapata has effectively done here in <b>The Lost Book of Adana Moreau</b> by drawing these men together on this quest is unite exiles across time and space. The exiled are people of different hues, religions, cultures experiencing the same types of loss, displacement and yearning. Although history has taught us that the victors get to tell the story Zapata reminds us that literature holds "the memories of the memories of the memories." Here in lies the voice of the people.

<i> Special thanks to NetGalley, Hanover Square Press and Michael Zapata for access to this wonderful work.</i>

In a sweeping story that spans time and space, Zapata tells the tale of a lost work of science fiction that was handed down through multiple generations of two different families. Dealing with time travel, parallel universes and various historical and natural disasters, it is a touching book about the power of imagination (and while that description makes it sound cheesier than it is, it is certainly accurate). One of my favourite parts of this book was how well the author captured the special resonances that exist between certain people, and how those resonances form into relationships that change the course of events. More strange fiction than science fiction, it will remind you immediately of Italo Calvino, particularly in its structure as a series of tales that branch off from one another. There is definitely a If on a winter’s night a traveller . . . vibe.

I want to love The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, the debut novel by Michael Zapata. Unfortunately, I find myself walking away from it again and again. It has all the elements – particularly in the beginning – of a story I should have loved, but I am simply not the right reader for it. I find myself lost, trying to follow the characters, timelines and references.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/04/the-lost-book-of-adana-moreau.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

I wanted to love this. It was beautifully written and very clearly had so much heart and soul put into it. But for whatever reason, I just couldn't immerse myself into this world as much I wanted to. Regardless, this is absolutely a book I would recommend, even if it wasn't right for me.

A book unlike any other....this novel holds many stories, many universes, many ideas within it, all of them spinning around within the pages to create a mesmerizing reality in and of itself. I would recommend going into this knowing only the bare bones, just so that the stories of Maxwell, Saul, Javier, and Adana can captivate you even more. I loved the rich imagery this story creates of every place and every emotion it explores - I have an even greater desire to go to New Orleans especially, as well as parts of South America. One of my favorite parts of this was Zapata's ability to draw various threads together that each retained their own unique significance to the novel, with none of the topics or stories discussed becoming boring in any way. With a mixture of story, history, magical realism and sci-fi, our characters must each go on an epic journey to discover themselves - or perhaps to undiscover themselves. I wish I had a copy of Adana Moreau's Lost World to read.

I absolutely adored this book. It was written so well and everything about it was so real! As the author wrote about the streets and the areas in Chicago, I was able to picture the entire scene right there in a real life place. This wasn't just one story. It was multiple stories within each other and that in itself was amazing. I love when stories are within a story. I think it adds a special type of uniqueness to the entire book. Each character was described and you were told exactly who they all were without any confusion coming up. This book is definitely going to live up to the hype around it! Thank you for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest review.

Initially, Michael Zapata’s The Lost Book of Adana Moreau did not hold my attention. Science fiction and zombies are not my thing. However, because I knew the book offered more that that, I returned to it several weeks and books later. I enjoy books divided between generations and gradually pulling multiple stories together,and knowing that Zapata would eventually get to these techniques prompted me to give the book the second chance. I am glad I did.

Early in the Zapata’s novel, a Latin American woman, Adana Moreau, marries a pirate and through time spent in a library learns to read. She devours books and begins to write, giving readers a quick taste of Zapata’s own broad reading and ability to work other stories into his. Adana’s first novel achieves moderate popularity and leaves its fans awaiting her second. Without my giving away details, Zapata’s readers learn that the second manuscript was destroyed before publication

Decades pass, and Saul finds a mysterious manuscript among his recently deceased grandfather’s belongings. It is to be delivered to Adana Moreau’s heir. How his Jewish immigrant grandfather came to possess a Latin American manuscript puzzles Saul, but he and friend Javier set out on a seemingly impossible quest to locate the writer’s son Maxwell, a theoretical physicist, in chaotic post-Katrina New Orleans.

With a creative structure and poetic prose, Michael Zapata slowly weaves together Latin American science fiction, a series of historical events including the Holocaust and 9-11, and a variety of characters’ stories, revealing the importance of stories to human lives and the way those lives interconnect to form a larger story of humanity.

Thanks to Hanover Square Press, NetGalley, and the author for providing an Advance Reader Copy.

Stories within stories, worlds within worlds! Not only was I impressed by the inception-like folding, but I was also impressed by Zapata’s ability to weave Saul and Maxwell Moreau’s lives together with grief, imagination, and the deep desire that what we see isn’t all we get. This book felt magical and fantastical, almost as much as the fictional novels of Adana Moreau. Every person has a story to tell, and we create a life by sharing that story with others. This is something that Zapata understands well.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC, although my reading experience was a 0/5. The text was TINY! I actually put off reading this book because I had to squint at my phone so much.