Lightning Chase Me Home: Middle grade with a whole lot of punch!
“Amelia Hester McLeod is named after two of her mum’s favourite explorers. Two amazing, fearless, awesome women: Amelia Earhart and Lady Hester Stanhope. But Amelia herself doesn’t always feel very brave or very bright. She lives on a windblown island in a creaky old house right beneath the North Star. Her dad is sad and silent since her mum left them, and her absent-minded grandpa suddenly seems convinced something strange is about to happen to her. When Amelia makes a birthday wish to be reunited with her missing mum, a wild magic is stirred from the sea..”
Lightning Chase Me Home is the story of Amelia. Amelia is a young girl who lives and with her father, grandfather and their dog. They live in the cold and wet island of Dark Muir, Scotland. The island has a rich and deep history of myths and legends (which, as we all know, I was ALL ABOUT) and there is the forever foreboding sense of a storm brewing on the horizon. I loved the use of this constant threat of storm coming… it kept me on my toes throughout the book!
As the story advances, unusual things start happening around Amelia. These unusual things happen to coincide with Amelia’s birthday and the wish she got to make as part of the island tradition. Who wouldn’t want to visit somewhere called Serpent’s Tooth Rock?! (I mean me, that sounds ominous as anything and I’m a right scaredy cat). Amelia’s wish made really emotional and over time it becomes apparent that the wish she made has stirred some deep and potentially dangerous magic on the island.
This book will keep you gripped throughout. You’ll be under the spell of the incredible writing style and the infusion of incredible settings and characters with folklore. Amelia is a really great protagonist that I know lots of children will take to. The unusual events and the rumbling of storms and the growing of the magic over the story kept me flicking the pages til there were no more pages to flick. I think every kid will see themselves in this story because we’ve all dealth with some of the things Amelia has to deal with: a poorly grandparent, bullies, a new school, struggles in school. Pair all of these things with ultimately a BRILLIANT magical mystery and you have a total winner!
Here we have another bloody brilliant example of an MG book that deals with some pretty tough stuff but in a beautiful way. It’s a book full of spirit, adventure and warmth and absolutely has a place in EVERY classroom, school and home library!
Have you read Lightning Chase Me Home?
Would you like to visit Amelia’s island?
A massive thank you to Scholastic for asking me to be on this blog tour! I can’t wait to see all the love this book is going to get!
S x
