Lost and Found

By Carolyn Parkhurst

Dang, it really gripes me when a novel is packaged to look cute and amusing but when you read it it turns out to be anything but. This is the case with Lost and Found. It has a bright, cheerful cover featuring parrots peaking out at you and bright, cheerful blurbs like this one: "Thoroughly original and inventive, peopled with engaging characters, and just plain fun, this second novel deserves to be as big a hit as the reality shows it genially pokes fun at." -Booklist

So one would assume this is a bright, cheerful and funny look at reality/adventure TV.
Well, one would be wrong. It is neither bright, nor cheerful. Turns out all the couples in the game show are bogged down with personal problems, two of the worst being the mother and daughter team and the Christian ex-homosexual married couple. Turns out the daughter was pregnant and her mom didn't even notice until the night her daughter gave birth in her bedroom. And the married couple turn out to be not so ex-homosexual after all.
The denouement comes when the players are asked by the show, "What have you found?" What the show is looking for is some big breakthrough moment, like, "I found that there is no one I'd rather be with through good times and bad than my wonderful boyfriend (or husband, wife, girlfriend, whatever)." So they ask the main character, the unobservant mom, "What have you found?" This is the big moment of the whole book. What has this character, who managed to miss her teen daughter's entire pregnancy, found out about herself and her sullen daughter? And you know what? I can't even remember what it was, that's how big of an impression it made on me.
OK, I'm not saying this is a sucky book. It's not. It was OK. You might enjoy it. What I am saying is it is not really a funny book and it shouldn't be promoted as a funny book.

Review from Kirkus Reviews:   https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/carolyn-parkhurst/lost-and-found-8/.