The Lost Girls was written by three friends, Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett and Amanda Pressner, who decided to push the pause button on their lives and travel the world for a year. The book is written by all three girls, that alternate as narrators for each chapter, and retells the story of their travels, their inner doubts and their findings, with places such as Machu Pichu, Rio de Janeiro, Bali and Sydney as destinations. It sounds like the perfect recipe for a book on friendship, growing up and wanderlust and, yet, the delivery falls incredibly short.

First off, the girls are so superficially presented or, maybe, so lacking in personality that the separate narrators actually made absolutely no difference. In fact, maybe it even harmed the storytelling, as multiple times I had to check whose chapter it was. Their narrating styles and personalities missed originality and character, which are essential for this type of narration and was surprising, considering they were all writers, previously. Instead, I finished the book without being able to remember who was who and who went through what issues. At a certain point, I even considered making a mental map of the characters, something I only really think of while watching Game of Thrones.

Secondly, although the girls planned an incredibly interesting and culturally diverse trip, much of that was left out and/or substituted by uninteresting boy, friendship and work drama. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't appreciate the fact that they tried to portray a middle class twenty-something's main concerns in life, it's more that the portrayal of these concerns felt extremely superficial. Instead of dealing with the topics in a way that was truly honest and raw, as a good memoir should be, most of the time it just felt as if they were talking about these difficulties with distant acquaintances to whom they did not want to reveal much at all. Meanwhile, the interesting parts of their trip was frequently sidelined, only being told in passing, as a small mention of the event. 

Consequently, most of the time it felt as if, despite having an entire year to explore these places and cultures and peoples, the girls never really share these things with us or worse, they never actually got to truly explore these things. Once again, superficiality reigned and I constantly felt as if a FunforLouis vlog was more well rounded than this book. And that's saying something.

All in all, it's not completely horrible. The book is fairly fun and the girls do share a couple of interesting stories, especially if you know nothing about the places they've visited. I would not say I wasted my time reading it because I feel like reading is always special and beneficial, no matter what, but I also would not recommend it, as there are much more interesting and fun reads to prioritize over this one. Maybe if it's the only book you have access to and you're quite bored? Yeah, let's say that.