The Girl from Everywhere

It’s not often you can pick up a fantasy book and laugh. Not only laugh but travel with a rogue group of people and enjoy every minute of it. The Girl from Everywhere is just plain fun! I loved the characters, so much personality! That it’s a time travel story makes it exciting, and I have a passion for tall ships, so she had me with the sailing adventure. Add to that humor and a feisty dialogue. I can’t say enough about this book.

I liked this book because it took me on journeys to different parts of the world, time-travelling in some of them. The protagonist is of Chinese descent with roots in Hawaii, not a place I would associate with finding Chinese people. I especially liked it when the past and present Chinese diaspora merged. It gives a flavour of what it was like to be one of the people buried alive with the first Emperor during the Qin dynasty. To this date, I still find it incredulous that real-life people were part of that grand burial, so famous for its… show more.

Nix has spent her whole life aboard her father’s ship, which can travel to any place he has a map for – whether that place is real or imagined. But he is obsessed with finding the map back to his lost love, Nix’s mother – which might mean that Nix herself will disappear. This is exactly the kind of thinking person’s fantasy that I love best. This is a book to savor, a world to dive into and hang out in. Every character feels like a friend, revealed in all their flawed yet compelling glory. My favorites were Kashmir, who… show more.