Candle Island
by Lauren Wolk
Intermediate, Middle School    Dutton    352 pp.
4/25    9780593698549    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780593698556    $10.99

After the accidental death of Lucretia’s father, she and her mother move to an island off the coast of Maine, where they buy a small farm. Their first summer there is full of drama—tensions between locals and summer people, Lucretia’s adoption of an injured osprey chick, a suspicious fire that destroys the town’s wharf, the inexplicable hostility of a local girl toward Lucretia, mysterious operatic arias that seem to have no source, the theft of a valuable artwork—and, tying it all together, a secret that Lucretia and her mother are keeping from the islanders and, indeed, from everyone. Lucretia is a child prodigy in painting, and Wolk believably inhabits a gifted character who experiences the world (sounds, relationships, emotions, textures, smells) in distinctive and specific colors. The contrast between the year-round islanders (wise, close to nature, hardscrabble, competent) and the seasonal visitors (rude, arrogant, rich, entitled) is a bit on the nose, but the examination of a highly original mother-daughter relationship, with a unique power dynamic, is intriguing and thought-provoking. Their big secret is deftly revealed, prompting members of this multifaceted community to re-evaluate their judgments concerning one another.

From the March/April 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.