Reading: The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig
- readerskitchen
- Apr 4, 2016
- 2 min read
"Sometimes a person has to let go of something to take hold of something else." - Heidi Heilig
Title: The Girl From Everywhere
Author: Heidi Heilig
Published: 2016
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Rating: 4 Stars! (Really Liked It)
I want to start by saying that this book pulled me out of a slump quite forcefully. I was a big fan. What I liked most about the story was that it was thoroughly unique. I honestly haven't read or watched something similar to it, and nowadays it is so difficult to come across something that you can't describe as "the next..."
Aside from its uniqueness it has all the things I love in a story: Time travel, history, pirates, and witty banter. It tugs on your heartstrings and makes you chuckle. Now for specifics:
In this story Nix Song travels through time and space with her father and his crew on an old pirate ship. Her father is on a mission to make his way back in time to stop her mother from dying. This comes with many complications, not the least of which is the means by which they attain their time travel. In order to travel to a time and place you need an authentic map of that time and place.
That is actually something I loved most. Oftentimes stories that include time travel are riddled with holes and confusion. Heilig handles this by making it unclear whether the crew is actually traveling through time or to independent representations of whatever is in the map. Right there you handle any and all arguments people might make about the cyclical nature of the story, but it's not 100% clear, which also helps push the main conflict of the story forward.
Lastly, at one point while reading the book I turned to read the About the Author. She had described Hawaii in such purely loving terms that I had to find out her connection to that place. Tangential to the story (and in the note at the end) I learned things I had never known about the native Hawaiian culture and the history leading to its annexation.
Anyways, I recommend.
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