April 21, 2014
Rosenfield’s second book, after 2012’s Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone, opens with a woman’s (presumed) drowning and sets up persistent questions: Is the woman an exile from the sea, or is she delusional? Has she returned “home” or killed herself? Her daughter, Callie Morgan, takes over the narration thereafter, and Callie’s description of her mother being “swallowed” by the sea maintains the blurring of madness and the ocean. Callie suffers from lung disease, and she gives a melancholy and absorbing account of the debilitating, isolating reality of childhood illness. Not coincidentally, during this period Callie and her father live far from the coast where Callie was born. The lure of intellectual challenge and cold, hard cash finally persuade Callie’s father to take a job on the coast again, and suddenly Callie becomes healthy, pretty, and sociable. Plot and romance kick in, too, and as Callie tries to unlock her family history, Rosenfield resists spelling out anything definitively. Readers catch glimpses of mermaids, selkies, sirens, and mental illness—any of which might be a red herring or the real thing. Ages 14–up. Agent: Yfat Reiss Gendel, Foundry Literary + Media.
June 1, 2014
A move from Wyoming to the Gulf Coast improves Callie's debilitating asthma while also awakening a dark inner voice that lures her toward the open ocean, where her mother drowned years earlier.Callie and her father spent years traversing the landlocked inner United States, where Callie led the lonely life of the perpetually sickly new girl. But the move to the Gulf Coast quickly improves her health. Soon Callie gains friends and a new gregarious boyfriend, Ben. But her short-lived happiness is destroyed by a dark family secret that many readers will have guessed from the very beginning. Callie's slow acknowledgement of her unusual heritage, in spite of copious "mysterious" clues from her maternal aunt, may build patient readers' anticipation for the big reveal, but many will be disappointed when Callie expresses little shock, disbelief or horror when she finally understands its enormity, easily accepting her destiny. Ultimately, many questions about the family's lineage and Callie's mental health remain frustratingly unanswered. The story is at its best in the sensory details that create its vaguely sinister atmosphere; the way the characters all feel trapped by their small town and yet also suffer a sort of terrifying lethargy that prevents them from escaping recalls the stellar Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone (2012).Unfortunately, both haphazard plotting and inadequate articulation of Callie's heritage make understanding the truth of her story difficult. (Fiction. 14-18)
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June 1, 2014
Gr 9 Up-When she was a child, Callie watched her mother drown in the Pacific Ocean. Her father, unwilling to stay in the family's seafront home, moved inland with Callie, where, for nine years, she's experienced inexplicable and debilitating lung problems. That changes when her father takes a job on the Gulf Coast, and Callie finds herself breathing better and finally able to live a normal teenage life; her illness is no longer a barrier between forming friendships and taking part in school activities. Her mother's sister Nessa, a free-spirited surf instructor, visits and teaches her to swim, and Callie feels something awaken inside herself. Its voice is at times overpowering, impacting her worldview and decision-making. Is she suffering a break with reality or is there really something within her that's calling her into the ocean? Why can't she remember the attack on a classmate that she's accused of? The more answers the teen receives-including about her mother's death-the more questions arise. This often eerie novel that toes the line of fantasy is a delight. Readers won't be sure just what it is that has consumed Callie-her own madness, or perhaps, something altogether inhuman-but they'll keep turning pages in hopes of finding out. For fans of E. Lockhart's We Were Liars (Delacorte, 2014).-Amanda Mastrull, Library Journal
Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from June 1, 2014
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Rosenfield's follow-up to Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone (2012) is a dive into dark waters, though whether those waters are literal or metaphorical is hard to say. In the nine years since her mother's ocean drowning, Callie has eked by as a sick, pale whale, gasping for air through feeble lungs made no better by medication or therapy. A job opportunity for her father takes her to Florida, where proximity to the ocean at last revives her. She acquires friends, a boyfriend, and, maybe most important, learns to swim, for there is a voice calling to her from the waves, perhaps her motherthough this mother seems different, black-eyed and clawed. Some may find Callie's ruminating repetitive, but Rosenfield's paragraphs are so suffused with the pull of the tide that it becomes a full-body throb, drawing Callie (and the reader) down, down, down to exactly where you think she's heading: the deep. The delicious confusion between fantasy and madness finds perfect expression in Rosenfield's hypnotic prose and upside-down chapter construction; which direction is up is never clear. Combine Margo Lanagan's The Brides of Rollrock Island (2012) with Hannah Moskowitz's Teeth (2013), chum it with the remains of John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let Me In (2007), and you'll get something close to this sinister, salt-water sonata.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)