Thursday, February 25, 2021

Dark blue rising by Teri Terry

As long as she can remember it has just been Tabby and Cate - the two of them living a nomadic life and staying off the grid.  It has never bothered Tabby that they don't have roots, as long as it is the two of them everything is balanced and correct - especially when they are living near the sea.  That changes when Tabby meets a boy named Jago, a boy who wants to be friends, something she has never experienced before.  When she is badly injured in an accident and taken to hospital it seems as though everything Cate warned her about is coming true - the intrusive questions, the tests, and then as they quietly escape from the hospital the presence of the Police.  Sore and confused, Tabby trusts that Cate will take care of them both as she always have - but then suddenly Cate is gone and Tabby is left with the shocking truth that everything she thought she knew was a lie.

 Tabby is not Tabitha like she thought, she is really Holly and she has parents who looked for her after she was kidnapped by her nanny as a small child.  A shocking discovery on its own, but then she learns that Cate, the woman who raised her was the very nanny who stole her away.  Everything is suddenly strange and confusing - she loves Cate, and wants nothing to do with her birth parents, but her mother obviously loves her and missed her and it is hard to resist.  Everything is slightly surreal, and when she learns that she was an IVF baby, she learns about the Penrose Clinic.  The Penrose Clinic helped couples like her parents conceive a baby when other IVF treatments failed, and the Clinic keeps careful track of its success stories in a longitudinal study that Tabby is suddenly part of again.  It is strange and unnerving, and the Penrose Clinic seems unconcerned about the strange test results the other hospitals had found.  

As Tabby slowly develops a better understanding of her mother and her past, she is approached to attend an advanced swim school for the summer.  Tabby has always enjoyed swimming, and this seems like the perfect opportunity to spend more time in the water - but she has no idea what she is letting herself in for.  There is something strange about the swim school, some of the teens attending have been in training before, but others were approached just before the school started.  It seems as though the staff are a little too interested in the students, and some of the exercises they are getting the students ot do seem to have no relevance to swimming.  Can Tabby unravel the mystery of what is happening before it is too late?

Dark blue rising is the first book in a new trilogy by Teri Terry - the author of several well received science fiction series for teenagers.  What starts as a slow and steady introduction to Tabby and her world quickly escalates into a tense thriller where you never know quite where the story is going until the next surprise is sprung.  Tabby is an interesting character, and you can't help but like her as she never gives up and keeps going despite the many different obstacles she encounters.  It is easy to be sympathetic with her and her circumstances, and the people around her can just as easily be friend or foe depending on what happens (no spoilers I promise).  Terry has taken the theme of climate change and created a unique character and set of circumstances that I have yet to come across in science fiction or speculative fiction around climate change so it was a nice fresh read without too many cliché moments (a nice change from some of the series that are out there).  I can't wait to read the next book, Red sky burning, which is due in July 2021.

If you like this book then try:

Reviewed by Brilla
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