Every banker learns early that when an offer looks too good to be true, it usually is. We are trained to squint at it and ask where the catch is hiding. So there was something delicious about opening a novel built on a world that is quite literally too good to be true, with a heroine who knows it.
Lost in Fiction is the second instalment in Victorine E. Lieske’s Fictional Hearts series. It returns us to the alternate universe Charlotte stumbled into in Falling Into Fiction, but this time the traveller is her roommate, Brynn.
Brynn does not step through the portal out of curiosity. She steps through out of fear. Her ex-boyfriend has taken the break-up badly, badly enough to threaten to break into her home and with danger pressing at the door, she reaches for the escape route Charlotte once showed her. On the other side she finds a world softened at the edges, and a neighbour named Marcus who is extremely rich and increasingly hard to ignore.
Here is where my old audit instincts sat up. Brynn is, in effect, running a live risk assessment on her own heart. She knows her stay has a maturity date; the real world is waiting, and she will have to return to it. So every step closer to Marcus comes with a quiet provision set aside; a little distance kept, a boundary drawn and then redrawn. That she tries, and largely fails, to hold that line is the whole pleasure of the book. Anyone who has ever told themselves “just this once” will recognise the pattern.
I also enjoyed how neatly this story mirrors the first. Charlotte was a writer who found herself inside a fiction; Brynn is more like a reader: someone who wanders into a story and slowly loses her bearings in it. The title earns its keep.
Like its predecessor, Lost in Fiction leans happily into rom-com territory. The familiar tropes arrive right on schedule, and the book makes no attempt to hide them. To my mind, that is a form of honesty. There is no fine print here. You know what you are signing up for, and Lieske delivers it with a wink.
The writing is engaging and genuinely funny, and there is never a dull stretch. The romance is nicely executed, warm without being cloying and Brynn’s reluctance supplies just enough tension to keep things from going flat.
Does it stand on its own? Yes. Having read the first book adds a layer of familiarity with the portal and with Charlotte, but Brynn’s story holds up by itself. A new reader would not feel lost, the title notwithstanding.
Is the ending predictable? Of course it is. This is a romance, and the destination is never really in doubt. But predictable is not the same as dull. Think of it less as a gamble and more as a fixed deposit: you know the return in advance, and it is still satisfying when it arrives. What Lieske does well is keep the journey interesting even though the outcome is settled.
This is the book I would hand to someone in the middle of a busy week, when the mind longs for a door to slip through, if only for a few chapters. It asks little of you, gives plenty back, and leaves you smiling.
Verdict: A light, funny, well-paced romance that knows exactly what it is. A low-risk, high-comfort read.
My rating: 4/5
I received a review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
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