BREATHE

The first in this series, Undine (2005), a lovely if unresolved tale of adolescence and magic set in Tasmania, is carried forward—but still not resolved—in this sequel. Enough of the first story is encapsulated so that those who have not read it won’t be completely lost, but readers would gain by starting at the beginning. Undine’s father, Prospero, invites her to go to Greece with him, and her mother, estranged from Prospero and widowed from the man Undine knows best, decides to go, too. Undine swears to keep the promise she made to her mother not to use the sea magic that fills her until she finishes school; readers of the first installment will understand why better than newcomers. Trout, the boy next door who loves her unrequitedly, falls away from his straight-arrow ways to seek the magic that fills Undine, and it all comes together in a rush of magic and power. Richly told, the whole has delicate shadings of language, of the complicated relationships between siblings, between divorced parents and among folk one might meet on the Internet. (Fantasy. YA)