Our Castle By The Sea. Lucy Strange. 2019. 336 pages. [Source: Review copy]
First sentence: I was very small indeed when Pa first told us the legend of the Wyrm and the Stones.
Premise/plot:
Petra "Pet" Smith is coming of age during the first year of the second
world war. The war brings many, many changes: her mother (who is of
German descent) is taken to an internment camp, her sister is acting
super-mysterious and stand-offish, her father seems distressed and out
of sorts. (There are reasons for all, but, you know spoilers wouldn't be
much fun--at least this early in the review.) The family lives on a
British island, and her father is the lighthouse keeper.
My
thoughts: I am very torn between two stars and three stars. Two stars
because it remained an "almost" for me from cover to cover. It has all
the elements that you would guess that I would love like crazy, but for
whatever reason it just didn't quite work for me. Three stars because it
wasn't so dull that I ever considered abandoning it. It didn't work for
me--but not because of the setting or the characters.
So what
didn't work for me? There was an underlying spy/traitor story
throughout. And the way that story comes about was just a little off for
me. One reviewer summed it up well mentioning that the ending where the
villain explains in great detail the whole villainous plot as he/she is
doing it...just takes something away from it. It gives it a very
cartoonish feel that just doesn't mesh with what came before.
© 2020 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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