Valerie Geary (Crooked River) is definitely an auto-buy author for me. Although Everything We Lost wasn’t what I was expecting, I still found the book well-written and thoughtful.

Lucy Durant was just 14 when her older brother, Nolan, 16, disappeared. Although life wasn’t particularly easy for the siblings (their father left and their mother turned to alcohol), they have always been close, that is until Nolan’s former best friend, Patrick, starts paying attention to Lucy and she decides that Nolan and his interest in the stars and UFOs is just too uncool.

After Nolan goes missing, Lucy goes to live with her father and that’s where we find her, ten years later, with a stalled life. Her father, Robert, is about to remarry and he feels that it’s time for Lucy to get on with her own life.

They were kicking her out. She had seen this coming, was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner, like after she dropped out of college her freshman year, but still her eyes blurred with tears that she quickly blinked away. She wasn’t ready. She would never be ready.

At loose ends, Lucy returns to Bishop, the small California town where she grew up. She feels as though she might finally be able to unravel the tangled truth of what happened the night that her brother disappeared. That means she’s going to have to talk to her mother, from whom she’s been estranged for the past decade. It also means that she is going to have to try to remember what happened on that last night she and Nolan were together.

Lucy and Nolan take turns telling the story of what happened leading up to the night Nolan goes missing. Nolan’s narrative illustrates his growing isolation, and fascination with outer space. He is convinced of the existence of life on other planets and extraterrestrials. He spends all his time watching the sky and taking notes about what he sees. When he meets and strange and beautiful girl called Celeste, he is sure that she is from another planet.

Everything We Lost is really a coming-of-age story, even though Nolan’s disappearance is an intriguing mystery. Geary writes Lucy and Nolan’s story as believer and non-believer. From the outside looking in, it is easy to dismiss Nolan’s increasing paranoia as just that: the men in the black cars are watching him; the lights in the sky are from space ships; he imagined Celeste before she miraculously appeared in his life.

Although I have my suspicions about what happened to Nolan – and I think the clues are in the story – Geary doesn’t offer any easy answers, and I am okay with that. Everything We Lost isn’t a quick read, but I enjoyed the book.