The Lost Girl King by Catherine Doyle
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
Age Group: Middle Grade
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Irish Authors, Mental Health Representation, Knight Characters, Magic Users, Royalty Characters, Fae/Fey, Mental Health, Physical Disabilities, Action, Adventure, Portal Fantasy, Various Magic, Irish, Faerie, Coming of Age
My Rating:
Published on: 1st September 2022
Pages: 336
Disability Representation: Anxiety, Foot Injury, Panic Attacks
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones
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Amy and Liam Bell have been packed off to stay at Gran's house in the wilds of Connemara for the summer. Out for a walk on the first morning of their holiday, they trace the flight of a hawk to a nearby waterfall - only to watch the bird disappear through it. Intrigued, the children follow and soon realise they've discovered the entrance to Tír na nÓg, the legendary land of eternal youth.

But they've been tricked. Almost immediately Liam is captured by a troop of headless horsemen who take him to Tarlock, the ruling sorcerer of Tír na nÓg, who is seeking the bones of a human child for a sinister new spell.

Packed with edge-of-your seat adventure, incredible imagination, humour and warmth, The Lost Girl King is the rare kind of story that has you reading long past lights out.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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Before I begin, I want to make a full disclosure that I’m reviewing this as someone who was interested in the story and that I’m an adult with no children in my life. The Lost Girl King by Catherine Doyle is a sweet story of two grandchildren who are on holiday with their gran in Ireland when they witness a hawk do the impossible: fly into a waterfall and disappear. Naturally, they have to find out what happened to the hawk, and find out far more than they bargained for when they find themselves in a sun-filled land.

Amy and Liam have been tricked into entering Tír na nÓg, and unbeknownst to them, their arrival has set off a series of events that could either save the land or destroy it once and for all. They haven’t been in Tír na nÓg long before they are set upon by a troop of headless horsemen. The horsemen successfully capture Liam, but Amy escapes. The story diverges as Amy seeks to save her brother and Liam finds himself brought to Silverstone Castle of the evil sorcerer, Tarlock, who captured the sun, and needs the bones of a human child for a sinister new spell.

Fortunately for Liam, Tarlock is away gathering the rest of his ingredients when he reaches the Silverstone Castle. While Liam tries to learn more about the castle and its inhabitants, Amy meets some of Tír na nÓg’s residents and tries to convince them to save her brother and Tír na nÓg from Tarlock’s new spell. It’s a race against time as both children work from their end to reach their goals before Tarlock returns.

Overall, the story of The Lost Girl King was not bad, and I feel that this is definitely an adventure story that a younger audience will prefer more than an adult one. I couldn’t help noticing the tropes throughout, and personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of the misogyny that Amy has to deal with. While it is important that young girls learn about misogyny and that they can do things just as well as boys, I didn’t think it was well handled at all. Amy only got to do what she wanted due to being stubborn rather than proving that she had the skills to back up her argument.

In fact, when she goes against the orders of Oscar, the leader of the Fianna (“Tír na nÓg’s fiercest warriors” who only accept boys/men into their ranks), she only causes more trouble and alerts Tarlock to her presence in Tír na nÓg. Amy is passionate and compulsive, and it felt like she was the cautionary tale of the book, which is was always very off-putting to me. Her older brother Liam is the complete opposite, preferring to take things more cautiously and spend his time watching documentaries instead of rushing off to explore like his sister. I was not a fan of the constant comparison between the two; however, it was great to see anxiety representation in a middle-grade book.

Generally speaking, the world-building was very interesting. What bothered me was a very simple mistake that Doyle made that broke the fundamental rules of the world she has created. She talks about the sun being constant and time being stopped, and how that has affected the residents of Tír na nÓg. Yet at the same time, she has their horses galloping everywhere. The problem with that is that horses cannot gallop for a long period of time; it stresses their bodies out. Riders are taught early on not to push a horse to gallop for that reason. Doyle talks about how the sun affects characters’ bodies, and then has horses galloping for miles on end without consequence (fourteen times). The correct movement would be a fast trot (zero) or canter (twice).

You may be thinking this is very nitpicking for a middle-grade novel, or that children of that age won’t understand. The problem is that children read books about horses and adventures on horseback and then want to try riding. I know because I was that child, and I started riding when I was seven, so middle grade is certainly not too young for children to understand. Likewise, it’s not too young for them to realise that if people are suffering from the effects of the sun, then so should the animals.

Other than these criticisms, I found The Lost Girl King to be an enjoyable read, with the conclusion and secondary characters being the most interesting components of the story for me. I loved the squirrel character Conan and his relationship with Green boy Jonah, and honestly, I feel that if Doyle had put as much character development as she did with those two characters into the two main characters, then this book would have been infinitely better. I can’t shake the feeling that this was a bit of an homage to older children’s stories in that way.

About Catherine Doyle

Catherine Doyle grew up in the West of Ireland. She holds a first-class BA in Psychology and a first-class MA in Publishing. She is the author of the Young Adult Blood for Blood trilogy (Vendetta, Inferno and Mafiosa), which is often described as Romeo and Juliet meets the Godfather. It was inspired by her love of modern cinema. Her debut Middle Grade novel, The Storm Keeper’s Island (Bloomsbury, 2018), is an adventure story about family, bravery and self-discovery. It is set on the magical island of Arranmore, where her grandparents grew up, and is inspired by her ancestors’ real life daring sea rescues.

​Aside from more conventional interests in movies, running and travelling, Catherine also enjoys writing about herself in the third-person.

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