Lost Lambs

A Novel

By: Madeline Cash

Narrated by: Christine Lakin

"Christine Lakin's reading is terrific. Her narration is wonderfully deadpan...and her characterization is pure ear candy. Lakin grants each character complexity and humanity..." — BookPage (Starred Review)

"[Narrator Christine] Lakin excels in her performance of the characters’ dialogue, seamlessly switching between voices and making each character sound unique. Lakin’s skillful narration perfectly captures the essence of this chaotic family novel.” — Kirkus

Rippling with humor, warmth, and style, Lost Lambs is a new vision of the charms and pitfalls of family dysfunction.

The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone—or something—is monitoring the town’s citizens.

Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy—one that may just bring them closer together.

Irreverent and addictive, pinging between the voices of the Flynn family and those of the panorama of characters around them, Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs is a debut novel of quick-witted observation and surprising tenderness. With it, Cash has crafted a family saga for the twenty-first century, all held together with crazy glue.

“I can’t remember the last time a novel made me laugh so hard or feel so much tenderness for its characters.” —Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

“Madeline Cash is a voice like no other.” —Lena Dunham

“I’ve read entire books that contain less wit and inventiveness than a single one of Cash’s sentences.” —Eric Puchner, New York Times-bestselling author of Dream State

“With a big surge of energy, Lost Lambs splits the nucleus of the American family.” —Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Not exactly sure how I felt about it

I just finished Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash and… I’m still not entirely sure what I just experienced.

This is easily one of the strangest books I’ve ever read.. but also one of the most interesting. Did I love it? No. Would I read it again? Also no. But I didn’t hate it either, which somehow feels like an accomplishment given how bizarre it gets.

At the start, I was fully ready to DNF. Then somewhere in the middle, I caught myself smirking at parts while also thinking “what is actually happening right now?” And by the end, I was locked in - just taking it all in and weirdly glad I stuck with it. The last page left me smiling, which I did not see coming.

The writing itself is genuinely good - it’s just operating on a level of strange that, for me personally, was a little… aggressive.

Overall, 3⭐️’s. Confusing, oddly compelling, and just unhinged enough to keep me thinking about it after the fact.

Dysfunctional family fun

Love the quirky, Flynn family, Harper is by far my favorite. Love everything wraps up, everyone comes together and are happy for each other, one big dysfunctional family

This book made me smile

Pure joy
I needed this book
Perhaps not literary genius, but lots of fun
A breath of fresh air

Intrigued

Imagine The Royal Tenenbaums but much darker and weirder. In Lost Lambs, the parents have essentially checked out to find themselves, leaving their daughters to their own chaotic devices. You’ve got an image-obsessed teen, a middle child being radicalized in the family treehouse, and a 12-year-old conspiracy theorist (the undisputed star of the book) who accidentally uncovers a billionaire’s sinister "fountain of youth" plot. It’s a wild, trigger-heavy ride that managed to be both hilarious and genuinely touching. I haven’t read anything this "enchanting" in years.

Weird but very funny.

The characters were not very likable. I guess that made them funnier. She knows how to write humor!