Book Review – The Girl from Everywhere

Book: The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere 1) by Heidi Heilig
Release Date: February 16th 2016
Tags: Young Adult / Time Travel / Pirates / Diversity / Sci-Fi / Historical Fiction / Hawaii / Own Voices
Rating: 4,5 out of 5 stars

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Goodreads

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Synopsis

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.

She could find herself, find her family, find her own fantastical ability, her own epic love.

Or she could disappear.

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Review

This book has so many thing that I love. Time travel, pirates, down played romance, maps, friendship, diversity and so on. There is just so much to love in this book and it makes me want to hug the book and shove it in your face.

But let’s start with the writing and story.  I read this book for a buddy read with Priss from The Dutch Reading Society and we read about 5 chapters at a time. It was so hard to put the book down after 5 chapters. I think that says it all. The writing style flowed so well and I flew through the chapters so easily. Story wise it starts off on the slow end but I didn’t mind that so much as writing itself read so fast. I did think the story dragged slightly in the middle. It could have picked up a bit of pace there, but other than that I have no complains in that regard.

As said, this book has time travel and pirates. But not in the usual way. Nix and her crew aren’t your typical pirates. They only steal when they must, well except Kash. He steals because he likes it. With their ship they can travel through time but they need a map of that actual time. Once a map is used once, it can’t be used again. I love these restrictions. Often with time travel one can go everywhere, whenever. Not the case here and I love it.

Other things that I loved was how we got such an interesting view on Hawaii and the politics of that time. At the end of the book the author also explained how some of these things actually fit in with the history of Hawaii and I love that she combined that.

Character wise I fell for Nix instantly. She wants to be her own person, have her own life, have her father’s love, to not disappear. But she is constantly drawn back and forth between her loyalty to her father and want is right and wrong and what she wants for herself.  Then there is Kashmir, her best friend and resident thief. He is such a charmer, honestly. Their interactions are just pure love and friendship. There is also Blake, someone new she meets. And while he might not be such a charmer as Kash, he certainly is a gentleman with his heart in the right place.

Having mentioned one girl and two guys you might have guessed that there is a love triangle in here. And there is, to a point. As mentioned at the start of this review, there is a downplayed romance in here. There are feelings and all these things but it doesn’t take away from the story. There is never any real question as to who she is going to choose. That is not something that Nix thinks of.  It was never about choosing between either of the boys. And the boys didn’t really do that either. Honestly, I was at a point where I was totally shipping her with both. That has not happened to me for a while to be honest.

The diversity in this book is also great. As mentioned, a big portion of this book takes place on Hawaii. Nix is Chinese.  Kashmir is Persian. Bee, a side character, is African and a lesbian.  There was much to love. Oh and did I mention there was a tiny dragon? Because there was…