Katya Balen, Ghostlines, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, January 2025, 288 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk) ISBN 9781526663870
As soon as we open Ghostlines, we see a lovely illustration of Ayrie Island. We notice it has sea caves, dunes, seals, treehouses, a ferry that goes to the mainland and even a secret island. All the ingredients that make a wonderful adventure story are there combined with the mysterious first sentence, I see him on the day that everyone else is leaving and the island is starting to breathe again. Balen immediately invites us into the island with the way she sets the context of the story.
Our interest is piqued when we read about Fledgling Night, Silent Season, Wild Wood, Jewel Beach, puffins, a new boy and an absent character named Rowan. We are drawn into a beautiful landscape when we meet Albie and Tilda, and readers will enjoy seeing the events of their lives unfold in idyllic scenes. Albie is the new boy who is resistant to the move to Ayrie Island- he misses the life he had on the Mainland. Tilda, on the other hand absolutely adores the island and she does not understand how anyone cannot love it.
Tilda sets herself on a mission- make Albie love Ayrie as much as she does. The problem is she takes enormous risks to achieve her goal as it results in dangerous journeys that may or may not involve ghosts. Balen builds up the drawn out tension quite cleverly with her poetic language and polysyndeton sentences. Perhaps the only drawback of the novel is that all the different parts of the resolution happens all at once very close to the end.
On her website, Katya Balen state ‘I love writing stories about bold, brave, wild children who connect with nature and with each other’. Indeed, in Tilda, Albie, their loving families and the community of Ayrie Island, readers will find characters who live peacefully with nature, each other and its seasons.
With this book Ghostlines, readers are once again treated to a wonderful middle grade novel written in the lyrical style that we have come to associate with Katya Balen.
Reviewed by H I Cosar
Read Suzanne Ingelbrecht’s review here.
