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ISLE

A detailed, evocative novel about a powerful heroine that revels in its emotional highs and lows.

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In this debut YA fantasy, a teenager and her nomadic aunt finally return home to a secluded island and their secret lineage.

Eleanora “Nora” Stone is almost 18. She and her Aunt Ada live in Washington, D.C., but have resided in 25 different places across the U.S. Now they’re about to move again, this time to Stone Isle, Maine, where their family originally hails from. Nora hopes the island will prove a more permanent home, despite it being haunted with the memories of her mother’s and grandparents’ deaths at sea. Her research reveals that Stone Isle is a secluded community, with only six high school students, that’s still dependent on landline phones. Settling into her ancestral home, Nora chooses her mother’s old bedroom. She soon finds letters between her parents in which her father, Alexo, says that someday they’ll be “free to love,” with “no more secrets, no more hiding, no more fear.” Nora asks her aunt for more family history, but Ada refuses to explain until four days have passed. In the meantime, Nora catches up with Eben, a boy her age who’s been avoiding her along the beach. He tells her that he ran from her, a beautiful girl, because local legends of deadly sirens abound. Dory surrounds readers in the eeriness of coastal Maine. She draws from Greek and Basque mythology in depicting the ancient lineages of the Sereni women and their vicious Lamian rivals. That Nora is the key to peace between the two bloodlines feels inevitable, but she develops a vast array of powers—like superhearing, speed, and other, more ferocious ones—that make her seem like an entire team of X-Men unto herself. An effectively sensual love triangle featuring Nora, Eben, and Aston Boxam (her Sereni-Lamian trainer) provides light against the tale’s deep, dark back story, which shuttles nefarious Elders, murderous twins, and Shapeshifters in and out of focus quickly. Dory also avoids the safety inherent in high school fantasy/dramas with a refreshingly spooky locale and stakes that continuously ripple through her protagonist's soul.

A detailed, evocative novel about a powerful heroine that revels in its emotional highs and lows.

Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4602-7526-9

Page Count: 360

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: April 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016

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Mary's Song

From the Dream Horse Adventure Series series , Vol. 1

A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.

A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.

Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.

A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Hastings Creations Group

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016

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ONCE UPON A GIRL

Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.

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Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.

The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.

Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6

Page Count: 196

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019

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