The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig – 454 pages
Book Blurb:
Nix has spent her entire life aboard her father’s ship, sailing across the centuries, across the world, across myth and imagination. As long as her father has a map for it, he can sail to any time, any place, real or imagined: nineteenth-century China, the land from One Thousand and One Nights, a mythic version of Africa. Along the way they have found crewmates and friends, and even a disarming thief who could come to mean much more to Nix. But the end to it all looms closer every day. Her father is obsessed with obtaining the one map, 1868 Honolulu, that could take him back to his lost love, Nix’s mother. Even though getting it—and going there—could erase Nix’s very existence. For the first time, Nix is entering unknown waters.
My Review: 4 stars
On concept alone, I wanted to read this book. Any story that combines history, time travel and mythology will grab my attention. In The Girl from Everywhere, Nix sails with her father through time and space. Literally. They can go to real and fictional worlds as long as they have a hand-drawn map from that time. The only catch being they can’t use the same map twice. Which leads us to our story. Nix’s father, Slate, wants to go back to 1868 to find his long-lost love, Nix’s mom, who died giving birth to their daughter.
There were things I really liked about the novel: the child-parent relationship and the fear of leaving all you’ve ever known to a world of the unknown. Throughout the book, my mind rested on the question that if Nix’s mother was found, would that mean the end for Nix. Is there a way for both realities to exist?
Often, the narrative had detailed and sometimes exhaustive settings which left the action open to interpretation. It left me missing something that could propel the book forward. We know that the Captain is the one making the time travel happen – but what about the ship and the passengers on the ship? What makes someone a navigator? I wanted a prequel to the book so I could understand how this unique world was made possible.
The author created a fabulous group of rag tag and diverse characters that were making their way through the map. Nix, the main protagonist finds herself in a simmering love/hate romance that boils over into a love triangle. I was glad to hear that this will continue as a series as the ending left some open-ended plots. Overall, this was decent YA time-travel story with a lot of mythical places and time periods.
Quotes I liked:
Jealousy is nothing but a fear of being abandoned”
“Love makes fools of us all. He has to believe it will work, because he’s in love.”
“I was a closed book, a rolled map, a dark territory uncharted; I was surprised by my urgency, but after all, to be known was to exist.”
“Sometimes a person has to let go of something to take hold of something else. You always have to choose what’s more important.”
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