Thank you so much to LibraryThing and Tundra Books for this book in exchange for my honest review. This is the second book in the series and continues to follow the four sisters as they get used to life on the island. I really enjoyed the first book but I didn't enjoy this one as much. This book has very heavy themes of bullying and not by just one person, there were multiple examples of people being bullied. At one point one of the sisters just seems to give up and really has no interest in anything anymore. It was incredibly sad. One of the most frustrating things was that one of the bullies was an adult and the girls felt very helpless to do anything about it. I was so frustrated by this particular character Jo and how awful she was to the girls that I stayed up late reading just so I could finish the book in the hopes that it would have a happy ending. I wouldn't say that I enjoyed reading it though, I just wanted to finish it. I did think the author portrayed the bullying in a very real way though. Especially when talking about the person who's being bullied and when the sisters are talking about how angry they get and how they don't like who they're becoming I thought the author really got it. I think we can all relate to those feelings at one time or another. At one point one of the characters told the girls "...it was easier to be uber-polite with people you didn't particularly want to have anything to do with than it was to be rude. Rudeness binds you. Politeness creates distance." I never really thought about this but it's very true. If you're rude to someone you're actually engaging with them and developing a relationship, even if it's a negative one. This is maybe not the best way to go through life! Being uber-polite because you don't want to deal with people! But this did make me stop and think. There were seven instances of blasphemy and the heavy theme of bullying. The bullying is verbal and emotional it's not physical. Overall just not as enjoyable as the first one. The one character was just a bit too frustrating for me. This book was reviewed on the Literary Club Podcast Season 2 episode 33 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1984185

This is the second in a series but it does well as a stand alone with enough of the backstory explained to make it make sense.

It's a story mostly about family (siblings) banding together to overcome adversity and find the courage and strength in each other to stand up for themselves and advocate for themselves after having lost their parents. It's a lesson we hope all children will learn to help them become independent and self-assured adults.