As Dread Pirate Roberts would say, “Get used to disappointment!” But once that boat sails into the mist, you will not go with it. It’s a book to explore character and what makes us adults, or children, or family. It’s a book to be talked about and thought about.

That’s not what the story is trying to do. Secondly (SPOILER ALERT) if you read this like I did, expecting it to be like a dystopian novel where eventually we find out the grand secret of the island, why it is there, how it works, and what sort of society would set up such a system for testing its young. But sometimes I wanted to strangle her for her selfishness. It makes perfect sense she would be this way. I would add a couple of caveats to put you in the right frame of mind before starting this story, however: First, Jinny can be a very annoying heroine.

On that level, it is thought-provoking and magical. The book is, of course, a metaphorical look at childhood, and what it means to become an adult. And that’s when their paradise begins to unravel. She will not leave when the boat comes for her. Jinny tries to be a good elder, but she chafes against her new responsibilities and can’t stop thinking about Deen. Jinny becomes the elder when her friend Deen gets in the boat and sails off to his mysterious future. They just know a simple warning handed down from child to child over the years: If more than nine kids ever live on the island at the same time, the sky will fall. None of the kids know where they came from, or what awaits them when they leave, or why the island works the way it does. They spend their days fishing or gathering food, playing games, telling stories, or reading books from the library, which was collected by a girl from the past that none of them ever knew. The children live in a collection of huts built by. You can’t even hurt yourself jumping off the cliffs because the winds will push you back to safety. At least, unless our protagonist Jinny starts having second thoughts about how things work. The second-oldest child then becomes the elder, responsible for mentoring the new young arrival, and life goes on. The boat drops off a new young child - so young he/she only has the vaguest idea of where he/she comes from - and the oldest child in the group gets in the boat and sails away forever, going to. Every year or so, a self-piloting boat appears out of the strange fog that encircles the island. The premise is simple enough: A mysterious island with exactly nine inhabitants, all children. This is one of those books that haunts you long after you read it.

Orphan island by laurel snyder