The Special Power of Restoring Lost Things

Written by Courtney Elizabeth Mauk

Narrated by Sadie Alexandru

Set against a layered Manhattan landscape, The Special Power of Restoring Lost Things explores a fractured family through the alternating perspectives of the mother, father, and brother of a young woman during the aftermath of her disappearance. A year of silent but collective anguish culminates in the fateful thirty hours after a body with a striking resemblance to hers is found, and we see her buttoned-up Upper West Side family spiral in different, dangerous directions: Her mother, Carol, nearly comatose by day, comes alive at night in a vigilante-like attempt to track down her daughter’s killer. Her brother, Ben, once the “good kid,” adopts her bad habits along with her former friends who may have been complicit in her death. And after failing to keep his family from splitting apart, her seemingly stoic father, Drew, finally allows himself to crack.

In her third novel, Courtney Elizabeth Mauk presents a nuanced character study and offers a jolting and unforgettable portrait of a family’s struggle to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Oct 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781522650102

Courtney Elizabeth Mauk

Courtney Elizabeth Mauk is the author of the novels Orion’s Daughters and Spark. She lives in New York City with her husband and son.

Reviews for The Special Power of Restoring Lost Things

[susan0316 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a novel about a mother, father and brother of a missing girl who are attempting to copy with her disappearance a year after she disappeared. As the story begins, the police have just called and have found a boy that they think may be the daughters. After a year of barely living, this news causes the family to implode.Carol, her mother, dresses up in her daughters clothes and frequents the clubs that her daughter went to in hopes of finding her killer. Drew, her father struggles with his inadequacies as a parent to both of his children and Ben, her brother, spends time with his sister's old friends to try to recover from the loss of his sister. The family each goes their own way to try to deal with the loss and there is little or no connection or shared grief. To me that was one of the saddest parts of the book.This is a difficult book to read and it just keeps getting more desolate as it continues. I didn't like Carol at all and wasn't too happy with Drew until the end. Make sure that you have a happy book to read when you finish this one - you are going to need the change of pace.Thanks to goodreads for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.