Lisa Wingate
2
Books ReviewedAsk LuvemBooks about Lisa Wingate
- Where should I start?
- Start with Before We Were Yours. It carries a reader rating of 4.6 out of 5 from nearly 159,000 Amazon ratings, which is an unusually strong signal of broad appeal, and its dual-timeline structure serves as a good introduction to how Wingate typically builds a novel — a present-day character uncovering a buried family secret that leads back into a documented historical injustice. It also stands entirely alone, so there is no need to commit to a series.
- What's their writing style?
- Wingate writes in a dual-timeline structure across both reviewed books: a contemporary storyline gradually converges with a historical one, and the tension comes from the reader piecing together how the two are connected before the characters do. Her prose is accessible rather than literary in the ornate sense — the emphasis is on plot momentum and emotional stakes rather than sentence-level experimentation. She anchors her fictional families in real historical events and documents, which gives her narratives a factual weight that distinguishes them from purely invented family sagas.
- Books we've reviewed
- LuvemBooks has reviewed two Lisa Wingate titles. Before We Were Yours (4.6/5 from 158,969 Amazon ratings) fictionalises the Georgia Tann child trafficking scandal through alternating timelines set in the 1930s and the present day. The Book of Lost Friends (4.5/5 from 27,672 Amazon ratings) follows a formerly enslaved woman searching for her lost family in post-Civil War Louisiana, alongside a present-day teacher who uncovers that history in her classroom.
- How do her books compare?
- Both reviewed titles use the same structural template — dual timelines, a present-day protagonist drawn into uncovering a historical wrong, real documents and events underpinning the fiction — but they differ in their historical settings and the nature of the injustice at the centre. Before We Were Yours focuses on child abduction and illegal adoption in Depression-era Tennessee, while The Book of Lost Friends deals with the trauma of family separation under slavery and the difficult search for reunion during Reconstruction. Readers who respond to one are very likely to engage with the other, though the earlier book has a significantly larger base of reader ratings, suggesting it has reached a wider general audience.
- What genre does she write?
- Both books reviewed on LuvemBooks are classified under historical fiction, though Before We Were Yours is shelved as general fiction in some catalogues. What unites them is a specific strand of the genre: stories of family separation and recovery, set against documented American historical events. If you read her work expecting broad sweep and battlefield history you may be surprised — her focus is consistently on the domestic and the personal within larger historical ruptures.
- What should I read after Before We Were Yours?
- The most natural next step is The Book of Lost Friends, which applies the same dual-timeline method to the Reconstruction South and has a reader rating of 4.5 out of 5 from over 27,000 Amazon ratings — strong enough to suggest it is not a step down in quality. If you want to stay with the theme of buried family secrets and archival discovery but move to a different author, Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale or Jojo Moyes's The Giver of Stars are frequently read alongside Wingate's work.
Who is Lisa Wingate?
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The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel by Lisa Wingate
4.5/5
Lisa Wingate's The Book of Lost Friends is a New York Times bestseller and a dual-timeline historical novel that roots its emotional power in the real-world tragedy of post–Civil War "Lost Friends" newspaper advertisements, weaving together the journeys of three young women in 1875 Louisiana and Texas with the story of a modern teacher who uncovers their forgotten history.
Reviewed Apr 26, 2026
Before We Were Yours: A Novel by Lisa Wingate
4.6/5
Before We Were Yours is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestselling novel by Lisa Wingate that dramatizes one of America's most notorious real-life adoption scandals — the systematic kidnapping and sale of poor children by Georgia Tann's Tennessee Children's Home Society — through two alternating timelines set in 1939 Memphis and the present-day American South. It won the Southern Book Prize and has sold over three million copies.
Reviewed Apr 4, 2026
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