ANNAGREY AND THE RED FOX GIRLS

Fourteen-year-old AnnaGrey England returns in Flanagan’s YA sequel and faces threats in her magical birthplace.

It’s been just a matter of months since AnnaGrey learned that she can transform herself into a red fox. She was born in the Laéth Realm of human-animal shifters but has lived nearly all her life in the human world. Because she’s heir to a throne, she knows her future lies in that other realm, even if the human one has always been her home. One day, her friends from the Laéth Realm, Cross and Coyote, show up with troubling news: Someone is abducting red fox girls. AnnaGrey is sure a villain whose plan she once thwarted is hunting her. As if that weren’t enough incentive to return to the Laéth Realm, her father, who’s growing progressively sicker, needs a healer there. AnnaGrey, her Laéthian parents, and her two friends leave the human world via a magical gate and quickly run into pirates, diabolical “crowes,” and a host of potentially untrustworthy people. Flanagan deftly depicts a teen who’s conflicted; AnnaGrey longs for the place where she was born but doesn’t want to say goodbye to her best friend or her home. The cast is sublime, from AnnaGrey’s buddies Cross and Coyote (one’s like a brother) to a pirate who claims she’s also looking for the missing red fox girls. This sophomore series installment relies heavily on knowledge of the preceding book; most of the characters and their predicaments originated in the earlier narrative, including a couple of essential characters who are repeatedly referenced but never make an appearance in this volume. Still, there’s much fun to be had as AnnaGrey’s breezy narration invigorates scenes of peril: “Something blows out of the sea—huge, green-scaled, and roaring, with two twisted horns on either side of its head.” Lingering questions at the end practically guarantee another sequel.

Sensational characters brighten this ongoing fantasy series.