Review of Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

Cash crafts a delightfully campy, oddball novel around a family of characters who for various reasons abandon social acceptability as they aim to find fulfillment, solve a mystery, discover compatibility, seek purpose, and coexist together. This is a darkly humorous, sometimes quirky tale that's edgy and provocative.

In Madeline Cash's darkly funny, oddball novel, the reader can tell what Catherine and Bud Flynn cannot: their open marriage is either directly or indirectly further destroying their dysfunctional family.

Abigail is a high schooler dating a man in his twenties, a former military man nicknamed War Crimes Wes; Louise's online boyfriend seems to almost certainly be recruiting her to be a terrorist; and brilliant Harper is sent to a behavioral reform camp because she is relentless in her (accurate) accusations about a corrupt conspiracy involving all of the powerful men in their town.

Cash actively makes over-the-top choices that are likely to cause discomfort--Louise's online boyfriend is an outrageously caricatured Muslim who is online clumsily recruiting potential terrorists; Abigail is a minor having a relationship with an adult; human trafficking victims get a cheery, Pollyannaish new start; and a neighbor child is differently abled but referred to in somewhat and also outright offensive terms. Take those elements along with the open marriage that pushes the family off balance in the first place, and nothing here is considered taboo. Cash commits her protagonists to unsympathetic behavior and uses their out-of-bounds acts and words to illustrate her characters' multifaceted abandonment of societal norms and acceptability.

In some ways, the messy, chaotic Flynn family reminded me of the sometimes feral Herdman family in The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever.

The stakes of the story's situations are quite high, but the tone of Lost Lambs assures the reader that no untimely deaths or horrors will occur (outside of the lunacy and tragedies Cash has already put in place). This was surprisingly heartwarming and wonderfully sardonic.

Other Books to Explore

Madeline Cash is also the author of the short story collection Earth Angel.

You might also like these edgy books, darkly funny books, oddball, and bonkers books, as well as books about families.