Lost in the Moment and Found is a book in the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire. It is the eighth book in the series and the fourth standalone, and was published in 2023.
Antoinette's carefree life ended with the death of her father. With the arrival of a dangerous new stepfather isolating her from the adults around her, Antsy decides to run away, and walks through a Door into the Shop Where The Lost Things Go. Because of her age, the Shop's caretakers recruit her to wander through the Doors and the realms beyond, looking for items to add to the Shop's wares. But as Antsy is about to learn, every Door exacts a price.
This book contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Elodina's father crippled her and probably murdered her sister, because he didn't want daughters.
- Asleep for Days: After going through a dozen Doors in one go, Antsy falls asleep for nearly a whole week. Hudson puts his claw down and limits her to five Doors per day.
- Break the Cutie: Antsy is a happy little girl with two loving parents, a great home life, and a joy in everything she has for about five pages before her father dies suddenly. It only gets worse from there.
- Capital Letters Are Magic: Antsy not only notes that she can hear the importance in the way that Vineta says "Doors" as opposed to "doors", she can detect the opposite effect when speaking to Elodina, who only refers to them as "doors" because she doesn't revere or fear them.
- The Cassandra: Tyler starts framing Antsy as a liar after the marriage, disagreeing with her on things like who cleaned the bathroom and why Antsy brought the plates to dinner. Because he's an adult and she's a child (and the lies are small and plausible things), her mother always believes him instead.
- Cast from Lifespan: This is The Reveal. Opening a Portal Door to the Shop ages the opener by two days — not much for a customer, but Antsy works there and opens multiple Doors every day for years, leaving her a little girl in a young adult body by the time she learns she'd been Locked Out of the Loop.
- Cat Folk: The inhabitants of the first market-dimension Antsy visits.
- Clever Crows: Hudson, and by extension all magpies, are revealed to originate from the Shop. The ones that escape to other worlds just forget how to talk within a generation.
- Content Warning: The book opens with an author's note warning about the gaslighting and attempted grooming Antsy suffers in the early chapters and a reassurance that Antsy gets away before anything can actually happen.
- Continuity Cameo: Exploring through random Doors, Antsy and Vineta visit the Moors and notice an odd pair of twin girls. The reader recognizes them as Jack and Jill from the time of Down Among the Sticks and Bones; Vineta recognizes them as dangerous and hurries Antsy away.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The narrative notes the irony in Antsy running away because she's lost all hope that her mother will believe her or protect her from Tyler, saying that if she'd made a slightly different choice and decided to risk it anyway, her mother would have immediately realized what was happening and saved her.
- Disappeared Dad: Antsy's father dies instantly from a massive heart attack while she's just down the aisle of the store, which traumatizes her for the rest of her life.
- Dimensional Traveler: The Shop allows children to open Doors at will, so Antsy and Vineta explore new worlds every day for interesting bargains.
- Equivalent Exchange: Nothing comes free; ask them what it costs you.
- The Fagin: What Vineta and the magpies actually are. Adults can't open Doors but they can walk through Doors someone else has opened, so they've exploited that by hiring children to open Doors for them, letting the children waste away while they get richer and richer. They manage to hold Antsy for two years before she uncovers their deception.
- First Period Panic: Antsy was seven when she ran away and Vineta never bothered to fill her in, so she reacts the way anyone would to waking up in a pool of blood.
- Genius Loci: Both the Doors in general and the store itself appear to have some form of volition and ability to make choices and provide things when they wish.
- Jar of the Bizarre: Deep among the Shop's shelves of oddities, Antsy finds several shelves with jars of lost teeth — specifically, from her and everyone else the Shop has drawn in to serve it, as a sort of Shrine to the Fallen.
- Lecherous Stepparent: Tyler, the man Antsy's mother marries, clearly has unwholesome designs. She runs away before anything too horrible can happen.
- No Biochemical Barriers: Averted. Vineta has a special crystal spike that she uses to test foods to make sure they're safe for consumption. With the multiple worlds and magic at play, being human isn't good enough...for example, bread from the Moors barely passes muster due to the wickedness of the place, while the cheese and butter are fine.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Tyler never does anything explicit to Antsy, with the furthest he goes being unbuttoning the top button of her nightgown. But his constant menacing presence, his manipulations, his insistence on touching her whenever possible, and his threats to her make it very clear what he's planning, and even Antsy, who doesn't know exactly what it is, can tell it's nothing good.
- Rapid Aging: It's revealed that every time a person passes through a Door, they age two whole days as the "cost". It's not enough to be noticeable for most travelers, who only go through Doors once or twice, but to travellers like Antsy who go through several doors a day, it adds up fast. Antsy ages nine years in two, and it's implied that many of the kids did it until they were completely used up. It also has some nasty side effects: Antsy going rapidly through puberty makes growing pains much worse.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: Antsy has left the Shop and can't return, and thanks to her Rapid Aging her own mother doesn't recognize her. Vineta has no intention of keeping her promise to tell others the truth about the Doors, and the cycle of exploitation is set to continue. But Hudson is starting to have doubts, there's hope that her mother might recognize her one day as the gap between Antsy's actual and physical age grows smaller, Tyler has been arrested and can't hurt Abigail, and Antsy finds her way to Eleanor West's school to tell them the truth about the Doors' cost.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: In sharp contrast to Vineta and Hudson, the original Elodina let all of her charges know exactly what they were getting into and trained them to do likewise. When Vineta (or perhaps someone before her) broke the tradition, her ghost spent years struggling to get a message to Antsy so she could learn the truth.
- The Runaway: Antsy flees home because she can't think of any other way to protect herself from her stepfather.
- Super-Sargasso Sea: The shop collects everything that's lost (and many things that were purchased). Socks flicker in and out constantly. There's a section for lost pets.
- Thieving Magpie: Referenced. While Hudson can't actually steal anything due to Shop rules, he does love shiny things.
- Tooth Fairy: Antsy's lost teeth are exchanged for chocolate coins and once, a note. It's a combination of the Shop and the spirit of a long-ago worldwalker who first built it, trying to communicate with Antsy.
- Trauma Button: Since Antsy's father died in a well-lit Target store, Antsy won't go in there for love or money and once wets herself rather than be forced through the doors.
- Treacherous Adviser: Vineta and Hudson have been hiding the true cost of the Doors from Antsy so they can use her to get through Doors, not caring that she's using up her lifespan to do so. Hudson tries to justify it by saying that kids who know go through Doors anyway, but Antsy calls this out for the excuse that it is, saying that there's a difference between choosing to give up your time and being tricked into it.
- Younger Than They Look: Vineta. And Antsy. Any child who stays in this world and opens the Doors ages at a rapid pace. It's unclear how much their mentality keeps up with their physical age.
