Annet Schaap

For fans of The Hazel Wood, this middle grade novel takes the dark stuff of fairytales and crafts it into a powerful story of friendship and light. "Once I picked the book up, I didn’t set it down until I finished it with tears in my eyes. . ." —The New York Times Book Review Every evening Lampie, the lighthouse keeper's daughter, must light a lantern to warn ships away from the rocks, but one stormy night disaster strikes. The lantern is not lit, a ship is wrecked, and someone must pay. To work off her debt, Lampie is banished to the Admiral's lonely house, where a monster is rumored to live. The terrors inside the house aren't quite what she thought they would be--they are even stranger. After Lampie saves the life of the neglected, deformed son of the admiral, a boy she calls Fish, they form a close bond. Soon they are pulled into a fairytale adventure swimming with mermaids, pirates, and misfits. Lampie will discover the courage to fight for friendship, knowledge, and the freedom to be different.

Of Salt and Shore

Story Eater

Of Salt and Shore really is a delightful retelling of The Secret Garden with a dash of Jane Eyre and Splash mixed with wonderful character development, beautiful coastal setting descriptions, and a story of mermaids I have not quite heard told in this way before. I thoroughly enjoyed this book; I hoped it would be included in a MG crate, but alas, it does not seem as though it will. 

Lampie lives in a coastal town with her father, the lighthouse keeper. She also keeps the lighthouse for him, as he spends his days incapacitated and reeling over the death of his wife, Lampie’s mother. Naturally, putting such a burden on a child leads to disaster, and it shows up in the form of a storm during which the lighthouse remains unlit due to a lack of matches to light it. 

Because of this incident, Lampie’s father is imprisoned in the lighthouse, and Lampie is sentenced to serve the household of the captain whose ship sank during the storm. It is during this stint that Lampie comes to meet a monster, who turns out to be a boy shut up in his room, imprisoned as much as Lampie is, and the two form an unexpected bond that ends in freedom for both of them. 

The character interactions in this book really made it a joy to read; I loved them and felt attached to them just as Lampie is. Schaap’s pacing matches the plot; it slows in the middle after Lampie arrives at her place of servitude and plunges the reader into her world only to pull readers quickly out of it as abruptly as she is at the end. Younger readers should not have a problem keeping interest.

My thanks to Edelweiss and NetGalley for the ARC, for which I give my own opinion.

Nickie Mohler

Great middle grade! I would love to read more about Lampie. She is a wonderful character. No matter what life throws at her, she makes the best of it.

Manon van Heumen

I'm giving this one the benefit of the doubt. This was a weird story, and not necessarily in a good way. The thing that bugged me most was the constant pov change and the writing style. Unfortunately these two pulled me out of my flow, and I ended up not really enjoying it as much as I'd hoped.

Of Salt and Shore

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