First one-star rating of the year. I really enjoyed Five Perfect Strangers and was excited to read more Natalie D. Richards, but FPS stands as a pinnacle of her work. One Was Lost was boring, slow, and Sarah suffers horribly from MCS (Main Character Syndrome), even for a YA novel. The characters weren't believable, the action wasn't defined, and it just dragged. Even the big reveal at the end felt half-hearted and lame.

Oh well, I'll read some of her work in the future, but this one will stay in the past. ( )

I’m a big fan of YA thrillers, but tend to gravitate toward boarding school settings. This one takes the teens and 2 of their teachers into the woods! I’m not sure I’ve watched the social dynamics unfold in quite this way before, as we witness the group taking on challenges while also dealing with cliques, romances, and high school alliances. Entertaining quick read and the audio was a good format. Page-turner!

I can't get too worked up about this book. It's not great, and it's not the worst thing I have read, it's just there. There's not a lot of backstory to anything, and we focus too much on Sera and her kiss and hiding out from Lucas in this book.

You maybe have a crazed maniac after you trying to murder you all, but hey keep obsessing over how you may be like your mother cause you like a guy like Lucas. I kept hoping she was going to get offed. There is very little character development. I am also peeved this book was completed after the 80 percent mark and the rest of the book was chapters from another book. Good thing I didn't buy this, or I would have been seriously ticked.

"One Was Lost" is about a group of teens who go hiking in some remote woods with two of their teachers. Eventually the group is separated from a flooded river and some of them camp on one side (Sera, Lucas, Jude, Emily, and their teacher Mr. Walker) with the other group (Madison, Hayley, and Ms. Brighton). When Sera and her group wakes the next morning, they feel out of it, and find that someone drew on their arms in permanent marker. Sera has the worlds "darling" on her, Lucas has "dangerous", Jude has "deceptive" and Emily has "damaged" on her. The teens can't get Mr. Walker to wake and it seems as if he's been drugged. When Sera and Emily refuse to leave Mr. Walker behind while Lucas and Jude get help, things go from bad to worse.

Sera's annoying. Sorry, not sorry. There is nothing to her. We find out that she is obsessed with not being like her mother. Sera's mother ran off when she was 14 with another man, leaving her and her father behind. When Sera realizes she has caught some feelings for Lucas, she is paranoid about turning into her mom and purposely avoids him after they kiss. When she finds out he is going on the class trip, she is all set to avoid him until the whole slasher in the woods thing happens and she is forced to confront why she acted like a total asshat to him. Seriously though. The whole premise was stupid and Richards goes on about it way too long. You have some maniac who [spoiler alert] maybe skinned your other teacher alive, but hey, keep talking about kissing Lucas on the deck of some friend's house throughout the entire story.

Due to Richards focusing on the wrong things in this story, there's not much there there. Lucas is a jock, or was a jock, but is the bad boy archetype. Jude has a chip on his shoulders due to being black and adopted by two gay men. There seems to be some other stuff there, but I just let that go cause I thought Jude was an asshole too. Emily's entire backstory made no damn sense. Still baffled why that was included. She apparently has good instincts though (apparently not since she didn't figure out who the bad guy was) so that's all that matters.

The writing was okay, but plot holes galore. I had so many questions. How did the bad guy get across the flooded river? How did the bad guy decide who they were going to mark? What if Sera didn't come on the trip since initially she was refusing to go? FYI the whole why behind this was beyond stupid and made zero sense. Maybe if Richards had started with the whole initial missing camper thing and then moved into the present it would have made more sense. Instead I found myself confused for most of this and not really getting where she was going with things.

The flow was awful. Probably because every five seconds you had Sera talking about Lucas, how much she hated him, how much she didn't, their kiss, the times they talked, blech.

Though the foursome don't get along much at times, Richards in the end tries to force a connection that I really didn't buy. I am now wishing I had just found some Richie Tankersley Cusick that could have fit for a book written after 2000. ( )

In One Was Lost by Natalie D. Richards, a school sponsored camping trip turns deadly for the five teenagers and the two teachers accompanying them.

Plagued by endless rain, the senior camping trip soon takes a dark turn when Sera, Lucas, Jude, Emily and their teacher, Mr. Walker, are separated from Hayley, Madison and the other teacher chaperoning them, Ms. Brighton by flash flood. Planning to meet up the following day, the two groups set up camp and turn in for the night, but when Sera's group wakes up the next day, they are horrified to learn they've been drugged and their camp, along with all of their provisions, has been destroyed. Even more chilling are the words inked on each of the teens' wrists: deceptive, dangerous, damaged and innocently enough, darling. After finding Mr. Walker too drugged to wake up, they attempt to check on Hayley, Madison and Ms. Brighton but they are unable to cross the still flooded river. Climbing to higher ground, Lucas and Sera make a grisly discovery that convinces them the three have met a gruesome, and deadly, fate. The seeds of distrust between the classmates are soon sown, but in order to survive their frightening ordeal, the four teens must pull together if they are going to escape from the deranged stalker who continues to taunt them while leading them into danger.

Initially, Sera's biggest problem with the camping trip (other than the miserable weather and plentiful bugs) is keeping her distance from Lucas. She and Lucas were involved the previous summer until she inexplicably broke things off and began going to great lengths to avoid him. Sera bristles with hostility and their exchanges are rather acrimonious until they are forced to work together to try to save themselves and their classmates. Underlying their interactions is a simmering attraction that flares up at very inopportune moments during their attempts to flee from their attacker. (Seriously, if you're in fight or flight mode trying to evade a deranged killer, it seems somewhat ridiculous and highly implausible that you would even think, let alone actually act, on the impulse to flirt, kiss and moon over one another. Subtracted half a star for this unrealistic attempt to add in a romance.)

A newcomer to town, Lucas started off on the wrong foot during a soccer match and he now has a reputation as the school's resident bad boy. He is constantly in trouble for fighting but this only adds to his appeal for his female classmates. Working with Lucas on a project for a school play, Sera discovered his softer side as they spent time together outside of school hours. Their flirtation culminated in a relationship of sorts, but Sera pulled back without explanation due to her unresolved issues from her parents' divorce. As the situation in the woods becomes more ominous, can they set aside their differences and work together to try to save themselves along with Jude and Emily?

Despite being classmates, neither Lucas nor Sera knows Jude or Emily very well. Although Sera and Emily share a tent during the trip, they do not exchange confidences and Emily keeps mostly to herself. Jude is well-known for his musical talent, but he is a rather enigmatic figure. He and Emily gravitate toward one another due to their suspicions of the other members in their group. Will they be able put aside their mistrust long enough to help Sera and Lucas find their way out of the increasingly dangerous situation?

With plenty of suspense, a sense of urgency and shifting allegiances, One Was Lost is a fast-paced and compelling young adult mystery. The isolated setting is extremely creepy and the sinister events ratchet up the tension as the teens try to figure out who is targeting them and why. Despite having a fairly good idea about who is behind the attack, Natalie D. Richards throws in just enough twists and turns to keep readers guessing both the perpetrator's identity and the motive for the nefarious scheme. With pulse-pounding action and an adrenaline filled final showdown, the novel comes to dramatic and mostly satisfying conclusion. ( )

Holy cow! Excellent scary suspenseful creepy intense book! Four teens on a school camping trip get separated from the rest of their group during a crazy flash flood. They're miles from anywhere, they've lost their supplies, cell phones don't work, and they just barely get along with each other. But that's just the beginning. Because they discover that someone else is in the woods, too, stalking them. That someone has drugged them and written something on each of their wrists while they were out cold. And that someone wants to kill one of them. !!!! I'm shuddering just thinking about certain scenes in this book. Excellent buildup of tension; every chapter ends with a startling revelation or ratcheting up of the suspense, good grief! It's so hard to put this book down once you get into it! The setting is very well-defined, so that you find yourself jumping at every snapped twig and rustle in the undergrowth, and feel the nervous sweat of the characters as they stumble through one really creepy forest. It does get a little gory, but it's mostly psychological horror. I loved the humor of the main character, Sera, who narrates the story in an occasionally dry sarcastic teenage tone (describing it as "woodsy purgatory", etc.) before things start to get seriously messed up. Even then, she finds some humor in her situation. And the other characters are each unique and believable. Readers will find themselves racing through the story to find out the twisted truth behind the crazy woodsy goings-on, if they dare. Might want to keep the lights on for this one! Good thriller, for those who want a scare with a little romance and a lot of suspense. ( )