The story primarily follows the family's troubles at work, church, and the oldest child Stevie's difficulty fitting in at school, which lead to him becoming increasingly withdrawn.

Dealing with themes such as religion and the nature of good and evil, the novel is an expansion of Card's short story "Lost Boys".

Step, a devout Mormon, moves his pregnant wife DeAnne and their three children, including seven-year-old Stevie, from Indiana to Steuben, North Carolina, so he can start a new job as a technical writer.

In addition to struggles at his new job with unpleasant and immoral bosses and coworkers, the Fletchers' new house is periodically invaded by hordes of different types of insects.

On the 22nd of December, Bappy arrives and fits the Christmas lights for them and lingers for quite some time while DeAnn and Step take their infant to the doctor.

Years later, Robbie and Betsy regard their elder brother like a legend and the family waits to unite with their lost child once again in the afterlife.

Robert Bird described Lost Boys as a postmodern detective fiction because it explores multiple realities and aspects of the supernatural.

The community to which the Fletchers belong does not uplift them, but hurts them, exemplified by a fanatical church member, a cruel elementary school teacher, a pedophilic coworker, and a serial killer landlord.

[4] According to Card, his original idea for the short story was inspired by Stephen King's Pet Sematary and his dislike of the novel's ending.

[7] His first mainstream horror novel, Card has stated that Lost Boys was one of his hardest to write due to the emotional nature of the subject material.

[11] According to Publishers Weekly, "some readers may find the fantastic plot elements jarring, [but] Card's easy and natural prose goes a long way toward authenticating the supernatural intrusion".

[13]: 61  Furthermore, England stated that Lost Boys loses "the powerful edge of social criticism and utopianism that Card developed in the mid to late 1980s".

[17] Orson Scott Card has claimed that many elements of M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense were plagiarized from Lost Boys, although he has said that enough had been changed that there was no point in suing.