Pirate Patty Reviews

This is a YA, magical realism, fantasy story that is a bit of a mystery as well.

Nora Wilder is coming unglued. Wandering at night, looking for something, forgetting who she is sometimes. Her two daughters, Zadie, and Finn know something is wrong, but Finn is young and Zadie doesn’t share her concerns about their mother until the day Nora walks down the driveway and leaves. No news, no notes, nothing for five years.

Finn was taken in by a great foster family and is now graduating high school. What she wants is to find her mother, but she can’t tell her parents and she isn’t sure Zadie will help her.

Zadie should have seen her mother’s leaving earlier. After all, she is a psychic. But she didn’t and now she doesn’t want anything to do with her gift. Shoving it way down until Jess persuades her to help track her mother. Jess has her own gift. Memories. She can feel memories in a place, so if her mother has been there, she will be able to tell.

They set on a road trip beginning with the old campground their mother took them to before. It’s there that Zadie begins to notice that Jess is disappearing into a sleepwalking state at night. Leaving in the middle of the night and scaring Zadie to death.

Jess feels these echoes and hears a song about a bird and she knows these memories belong to Nora. As they go from place to place, Zadie is worried that Jess has whatever their mother had. Maybe she should stop this now and send Jess home before there is no more Jess.

This is a YA fantasy, magical realism story of things we don’t understand, and the powerful pull of family.

I enjoyed it!

NetGalley/ November 15th, 2022 by St. Martin’s Press