Lost and Found by Tarah DeWitt

I love the world of Spunes. I love the stories Tarah DeWitt tells. And I am forever falling in love with the people she creates.

Lost and Found is one of those books where I felt every soft-spoken word and every unspoken one. Every hug. Every light touch. Every moment of yearning between two people who have spent so much time carrying things alone.

I felt lost. And then I felt found.

Bea is grieving the loss of her best friend, Merritt, while also facing her own struggles with infertility and figuring out what motherhood might look like for her. When Merritt leaves Bea her frozen eggs, it gives Bea another possible path, but also ties her future even more tightly to the friend she’s trying to learn how to live without.

Then there’s Silas.

Silas is a firefighter recovering from his own trauma, and he and Bea have spent years orbiting each other with so many feelings left unsaid. When Bea needs somewhere to go, Silas gives her a home. But really, these two slowly become a safe place for each other.

And THAT is where this book got me.

The yearning between Bea and Silas is next level. This isn’t a romance built around huge declarations or flashy moments. It’s in the way he takes care of her. The way they talk. The touches that linger. The history between them. All the things they’ve wanted to say but haven’t. There is such tenderness between them that I found myself hanging onto the smallest moments.

Silas especially stole my heart. That man would lay himself bare for Bea. He wants to take care of her without taking away her ability to take care of herself, and there is something incredibly beautiful about the way he loves her.

I also appreciated that this story allows its characters to be complicated. Grief isn’t neat. Loving someone after they’re gone doesn’t suddenly make the difficult parts of that relationship disappear. Merritt and Bea’s friendship especially left me with complicated feelings. There were moments when I questioned how much Bea had given of herself and how much of Merritt she was still being asked to carry, even after her death. The gift of her eggs is beautiful on one level, but it is also incredibly complicated, and I liked that this book made me sit with those feelings.

This is NOT a light, fluffy romance.

There is grief here. Infertility. Survivor’s guilt. Trauma. Loss. There are two people trying to figure out who they are after life has changed them in ways they never asked for.

But there is also so much hope.

At its heart, Lost and Found is about finding your way forward without pretending the past didn’t happen. It’s about the beautiful moments we create with people and how we carry those moments with us. It’s about letting yourself want something again after you’ve lost so much.

And it is about two people who have loved each other in one way or another for a very long time finally finding their