Synopsis:
Twins Jess and Jude Carter live the dream life: they sail around the world on their yacht, You’ve Got A Friend, with their guardian Gabe, and their dog Sam. They spend their days playing on beaches, sailing from island to island, and studying. Everything is going beautifully until Gabe vanishes during the night, and then the twins are caught up in a terrible storm. Their yacht is destroyed and they are lucky to escape with their lives.
Just as the twins think that they’ve been left penniless, an offer comes from a wealthy British couple. Media mogul Clifford Blakeney and his wife Maria want to adopt Jess and Jude, and bring them to live on their estate alongside their youngest son Caspian. The twins’ parents worked on the estate many years before, and at first it seems that Clifford and Marina were moved by the twins’ plight. However, the twins have barely arrived at the estate before they begin to wonder if they are wanted there at all.
There are secrets hidden in the Blakeney’s home: secrets that are tied up in the twins’ past. Can the twins solve them in time?
Review:
Lauren St John writes mysteries that are reliably exceptional. Wave Riders is exciting because this time a large part of the mystery is the protagonists themselves. Jess and Jude don’t know much about either of their parents, who died before they were born, and they certainly don’t know why their Mum fetched up in their childhood home of Bantry Creek, USA. All they know is that she turned up on a Greyhound Bus one day and was taken in, heavily pregnant, by a local diner. When she died giving birth, she left them in Gabriel’s care. The mystery that surrounds the twins’ origins begins at the very start of the book and follows them through to the final chapters. When the Blakeney family comes into their lives, this mystery only intensifies as they try to work out whether or not their new guardians have their best interests at heart. Put it simply: I was hooked. I sat up into the small hours over two nights because I was desperate to know how things resolved.
Jess and Jude are great characters. Jess is bookish and brainy, while Jude is outdoorsy and good with his hands. He’s also shy in a way that Jess isn’t and he lacks her self-confidence. Something happens in the storm that destroys the twins’ boat that bothers Jude through a large part of the book and his emotional journey is another gripping part of the book.
There’s an environmental element to the story, something which won’t surprise LSJ’s readers, but I don’t want to say any more than that due to risk of spoilers. The sailing scenes and terminology are fantastic too and I’d love to see more books that get deep into hobbies in this way.
Although there are some scary situations in this book, the intended age group is always kept in mind. The twins have Sam with them for large parts of the time, so they have one friend. There are adults on side for them even when others aren’t. The scenes in which the twins’ lives are in danger are never needlessly prolonged and there is always someone aware of what is happening: the reader knows that there is a good chance of rescue.
It’s exciting to see another teen book from Lauren St John: anyone who enjoys this should check out The Glory, The Snow Angel, and The One Dollar Horse series.
I got deep into this story and feel as if I lived the ups and downs alongside the main characters as I read. This is a mystery with a powerful pull and it swept me along with it until the very end. Brilliant.
- Wave Riders by Lauren St John is available now from Macmillan Children’s Books UK. RRP. £7.99 (With thanks to the author and to Macmillan Children’s Books UK for my copy. Opinions my own.)
