My Lost and Found Life

MY LOST AND FOUND LIFE by Melodie Bowsher
Category: Contemporary
Age Recommendation: Grades 9+
Release Date: 8/22/06
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Reviewed by: Carrie Spellman
Rating: 5 Stars

It’s five days before graduation and Ashley’s perfect life is crumbling. Her mother is being accused of embezzling a million
dollars, and has disappeared. Ashley can’t believe her mother would do something like that, much less disappear and leave
her with the fall-out. Although it’s starting to look like it all might be true. One by one the things Ashley counted on and took
for granted are falling away. There’s no way she can afford the senior trip to Hawaii. Her perfect boyfriend won’t even
acknowledge her. Gone are her plans to go to college in Boston with her best friend. Not to mention the bills, but those can
wait for her mom to come back. Except it’s getting pretty obvious that she’s not coming back.

Suddenly Ashley, who’s always just gotten what she asked for, has to fend for herself. It’s a hard crash course in reality.
There’s no way she can afford to keep the house, even after she has a yard sale to sell off its contents. She needs a job, but
it’s hard to find a job with no work experience. It’s impossible to find a place to live without income. The only people who
can help are her mother’s ex-boyfriend, who doesn’t like her, her mother’s best friend, who thinks she’s a spoiled brat, and
the cop who’s investigating her mom. Everyone seems to be waiting for her to fail.

Ashley finds herself living in a camper behind a gas station., without heat or running water. She falls into a job at Mad
Malcom’s, an off-beat coffee shop where the clientele is as nutty as the owner. In her wildest dreams she could never
imagine her life getting this off track. The question is, can she pull herself out of where she‘s ended up? And, what really
happened to her mother?

On the way through she learns a few things about real friends, dangerous people, and personal strength.

MY LOST AND FOUND LIFE is so well-written that Ashley seems like a real person. It’s written like an autobiography,
and I almost forgot that it wasn’t a true story. Especially since it could be--things like this actually happen to people. It is a
good reminder that you don’t always know what people have been through. As well as a reminder that you might be
surprised at what you can do when you run out of options.