By Kate Angelo
If you had told me years ago that the trauma of my childhood would one day shape a bestselling suspense novel, I probably would’ve laughed. Or cried. Maybe both. But the truth is, the hardest parts of our story often become the ones that resonate the most.
Girl Lost wasn’t just a story I wanted to tell. It was one I needed to write. Beneath the layers of action, mystery, and romance lies the raw emotional core of a woman trying to discover who she really is.
The heroine of Girl Lost is Luna Rosati, a smart, capable, and resourceful CIA counterintelligence officer. She’s also carrying the weight of too many secrets, too many roles, and too much pain. In her effort to protect herself, she buried herself in layers of fiction and forgot what she looked like underneath them.
I know that feeling.
I grew up in the shadow of addiction. My mother’s battle with alcohol abuse left me living a life that fiction can’t quite capture. Kidnappings, murder, suicide—I had a front-row seat to it all. From a very young age, I was forced to take on responsibilities far beyond my years. Just when I thought I understood how broken life could be, I ended up in foster care.
Growing up in poverty and neglect left me with a deep belief that I was never going to measure up. I constantly compared myself to kids who seemed to have “normal” families. Like Luna, I learned how to adapt, how to perform, how to disappear behind whatever version of myself felt safest in the moment.
It’s easy to lose track of who you are when you spend so much time trying to survive.
Luna’s journey mirrors mine in more ways than I expected. She excels under pressure but doesn’t know how to rest. She keeps people close enough to be helpful but never close enough to be dangerous. She wants to change the world but doubts she’s worthy of anything good. And she’s not alone. Girl Lost is full of characters shaped by trauma, trying to move forward while secretly wondering if they’re too damaged to get it right.
That’s the real heart of the book. Not just the case Luna and Corbin are trying to solve, but the emotional unraveling that happens when you’ve spent years pretending you’re fine. And the slow, messy process of figuring out who you really are when the masks come off.
Yes, the book includes cutting-edge medical tech. Yes, there’s a love story. And yes, there’s danger, twists, and adrenaline-fueled moments (and a few dead bodies) that I love to write.
But more than that, Girl Lost is about identity. It’s about what happens when you stop performing and start peeling back the layers. And it’s about the quiet kind of courage it takes to face your past and accept that it shapes you, but doesn’t define you.
I wrote this book for anyone who’s ever looked in the mirror and felt like a stranger. For anyone who’s been told they’re too much, or not enough. For anyone who feels like their past won’t let go. For anyone who’s spent more energy hiding their story than healing from it.
That’s also why my husband and I are so passionate about the nonprofit we co-founded. We help individuals and couples build healthy relationships, because we know what it’s like to grow up without that foundation. I never had someone show me what healthy love looked like. Not between a parent and child, not in a marriage. We’re working to change that for the next generation.
We believe that when people learn how to communicate, how to trust, and how to love in ways that heal instead of hurt, families thrive. And when families thrive, whole communities change. It’s not glamorous work. Often, it’s unpaid. But it’s the kind of work that reaches beyond the page. And it’s worth every second.
Girl Lost may be fiction, but the emotions are real. If Luna’s journey helps even one reader stop hiding and start healing, then it was worth every page.
Download an exclusive deleted scene from Girl Lost on the book page at kateangelo.com.
