Haylie Hanson’s Debut book, Calliope Jones and The Last World Diver Book Review by Roan Reedling author of the Rocket McGee series.

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Or, best get it as part of this trilogy:

Beauty!

Beauty. Beauty. It’s what I kept thinking as I read; as I closed the book for the night. I saw, and felt, artistry at work.

It’s been a long time since I felt immersed in an author’s world; actually involved in the story; actually IN the world. In fact, the last time was maybe never. But, by the power of this author’s gorgeous writing, I endured slow-motion end-of-summer doldrums and later dragged myself to school and family meals right along with the story’s eponymous hero, Calliope Jones. Lulled to calm before the storm.

I found the author’s word choices perfectly apt and descriptive in wonderful ways; sights and smells, tastes and touch, the lights and noise of her world, so colorful, redolent, delicious; mundanely familiar and vividly real. It’s like, phrase after phrase I’d clutch the book to my chest, close my eyes and re-enter her world to savor it all again; like recalling the layered flavors of a favorite childhood comfort food and beverage. Fun and evocative.

But, I couldn’t pause. I couldn’t stop and re-savor a moment of her world. I had to move on. Despite her storytelling’s beauty, the author held me in suspense and eager to plunge deeper into her tale.

This book is the best example I’ve ever read of an author leveraging my fuller knowledge of the hero’s fate — fuller than the hero’s own — to yank me into the story, then through it, so I could satisfy my itch to learn the details of how things got where they’re going.

She stuffed me with that fuller knowledge by starting the book with an intriguing flash-forward; a scene vague enough not to give everything away, but grandiose and packed with climactic, cinematic action. And, in it, I felt the hero’s awe, her wonder, excitement, trepidation, and resolve.

Then the author tossed me out of the flash-forward , back to the story’s start, back where it all began and, even knowing where I was headed, sort of, she drew me headlong and uncontrollably through the story, with hardly the sense of a page-flip, as the hero delved the mystery she’d stumbled on, dug out its secrets, and made sense of her discoveries, about herself, about her world.

And, through it all, I experienced her warring excitement and reluctance — even refusal — to accept her supposed destiny. She’s her own girl, after all, Calliope Jones.

Anyway, I really liked this book, in case it didn’t come across. I think you will too. I think ANY kid will.