Hearth and Pages: Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid

“And maybe the only way to find what you’re looking for

is to get lost along the way”

Let’s Get Lost is a YA contemporary novel by Adi Alsaid. This book tells a story about Leila, a girl who went on a road trip to see the Northern Lights. Along the way, Leila will meet four strangers: Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia. The four of them find a friend in Leila, and for better or worse, their lives are forever changed when Leila left them. But it’s not just the four strangers lives that will change, Leila will also discover things that she’s looking for when she get lost and zigzagged her way to see the Northern Lights.

First of all, I would like to say thank you to Tanvi a.k.a @celaenasaradothien—a fellow bookstagrammer—who recommend and gave this book to me. Thanks, girl! Okay, without further ado, let’s get into the review. Let’s talk about the characters. We have Leila, who is obviously our main character, and one of my favorite. And we have other four central characters whose stories tied in with Leila's. We have Bree, Elliot, Hudson, and Sonia. I’m going to start with the bad parts. I don’t like one of the central character, and I’m indifferent towards another one of central character. Honestly, if Alsaid decided to erase them from his book, I won’t mind it. I might actually like his book more if he did that. Their personality is just meh and their stories are not important and impactful enough in my eyes.

I also have a hard time liking the main character at the first time. Because in the first few chapters, she was described as a manic pixie dream girl (MPDG), which is actually a term I really don’t like to use. Why? Because I feel like it’s a term to described a female character whose life is shaped and defined by male character, and like it’s their only purpose to be there in the story. And some of them are actually not. I actually love some characters that has been labelled as MPDG, because they have awesome personalities. So you have to understand, as much as it is painful to me to use this term, Leila—in the first few chapter—is indeed an MPDG. That being said, she’s actually not. During your journey with Leila, you will find out that she’s much more than MPDG as Alsaid reveal her story to other people’s point of view. And that’s the reason I ended up loving her. There are other two central characters that I like, they are Bree and Sonia. I like both of them, because they have such strong personalities unlike the other half of the central characters.

As for the story, I found a bunch of tropes that I’m already tired of, especially when I read YA books. But my least favorite trope in this book is the insta-love. This happened at the same time our precious main character described as MPDG, and I hate it. I also notice that the half parts of this book is full of cliche, and predictable, and that’s not really good for me.

That being said, I really like the other half part of this book. The one thing that authors do and I like is when they leave ‘bread crumbs’ for us to find and guess the ending, I call it ‘Hansel and Gretel’-ing. And I love it when they make me guess and I guess wrong. Well, I was not 100% wrong, it’s more like 70% wrong, but yeah I was wrong. I have to say that Alsaid is quite smart in ‘Hansel and Greteling.’ Remember when I said the half part of this book is predictable? I feel like Alsaid is deliberately make the half of his story to be predictable, so that the reader will be mislead and get lost at the end. Yeah, that pun was intended, I’m not even sorry. But, honestly though, I did not see that coming. I mean, not the last chapter, that I already know will happened. But the revelation of the more important things in the main character's story is the one that I did not see coming. And I’m happy for that, kudos to you Mr. Alsaid, good job.

In conclusion, I’m a bit torn, I like this book for most part. I love the main character, I really like some of other characters. I also like the fact that the story are both predictable and unpredictable. But at the same time, I found a lot of cliche and tropes that I don’t like. If only Alsaid decided to get rid of that, I’m pretty sure the book will be even better. Do I recommend this book? Yes. Especially if you like to read something that is light and funny but still give you a lot of things to learn about life and self-discovery.