BookView Review rated it:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

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Waterside Productions

Pub date January 6, 2022

ISBN 978-1956503555

Price $16.95 (USD) Paperback, $0.00 Kindle edition

Lockton presents a young boy’s transformative Caribbean summer camp navigating fear, guilt, and regret in this moving tale. 11-year-old Ethan Carpenter has always found his father a little aloof, but when he fails to get help for his dying mother, his father blames him for the death and completely casts him aside. When the rich and influential Mr. van Rosendahl offers Ethan’s father to take the boy to a Caribbean sailing camp, the older Carpenter doesn’t think twice and sends Ethan away. But what is Mr. van Rosendahl’s real intention? Ethan must figure it out and find a way to save himself. Lockton’s deftly crafted narrative gradually builds the growing sense of dread that has the anxious reader fearing for the vulnerable Ethan. Ethan’s struggles to manoeuvre emotional vulnerability in the face of tense familial dynamics, which include strained relationships with his father and his mother’s untimely death, resonate. The discomfort and fear that he feels in Mr. Rosendahl’s presence come through clearly: what is the man’s real intention? Will he ever get out unscathed? Johnson as a secondary character provides unexpected complexity. The novel deftly highlights conversations around adolescent sexuality, self-realization, self-discovery, pedophilia, faith, trust, shame, and redemption. Lockton is an author to watch. 

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