![]() Several threads of romance and friendship get lost in the book’s turn toward melodrama, but fans of Ernshaw’s The Wicked Deep (BCCB 3/18) may appreciate another tale of sisterly bonds tested by magic, love, and vengeance. Still, the elements of magical realism are beautifully employed here, with the Fernweh family history and the story of the endangered bird particularly poignant. She is the author of five critically acclaimed novels: The Half Life of Molly Pierce, The Lost & Found, Everything All at Once, Summer of Salt, and You Must. The island has a cozy, comfortable quirkiness, with the Fernweh magic mostly an open secret and the birders making a warmly eccentric secondary cast it’s jarring, then, when the tone moves abruptly to menacing as the town turns on the girls, and the revelation of Mary’s sexual assault at the hands of a neighbor plays more like contrived drama than true tragedy. Katrina Leno grew up in Connecticut and spent her childhood summers by the shore in Massachusetts, where The Half Life of Molly Pierce takes place. When the bird is brutally killed, suspicion immediately falls on the “witchy” Fernweh girls, and Georgina wonders if her sister was involved with the crime. Meanwhile, she and her twin sister, Mary, help their mother run their inn in their small island town, a major attraction for bird enthusiasts due to a bird of a rare species that returns to roost every summer. ![]() This summer is especially important for Georgina Fernweh: she’ll be turning eighteen, and she’ll finally manifest the magic possessed by the women in her family. ![]()
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