As someone who has made some beautiful memories on PEI, I was so excited for A Sea of Spectres. And this historial fiction mixed with fantasy, was a fabulous inter-generational story. Keep reading this book review of A Sea of Spectres for my full thoughts.
Summary
Raina is an accomplished detective working against smugglers and traffickers on PEI, and she’s eager for an imminent promotion. But there’s a catch: she has to go work on a Coast Guard ship for a week. And Raina, though Island born and raised, loathes the sea. When she gets too close to it, the phantom ship starts calling to her, and the lure of its deadly cold flames threatens to overwhelm her.
When she starts pulling the threads of a missing-person case, she discovers how Doiron women’s uncanny abilities have impacted her ancestral line: Madeleine’s powers tried to keep her family safe during the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1758; Celeste’s tempted her to take back what was rightfully hers in 1864. Generation after generation of women have had to reckon with what their abilities can and can’t do to protect their families. And now it’s Raina’s turn. Is she strong enough to carry her family’s legacy? Or will that legacy carry her—out into the burning sea of spectres?
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
From the beginning, I loved the setting of A Sea of Spectres. There’s a feeling of isolation, a small community, and family. What begins as a story about family ends up becoming this inter-generational story about sacrifice, power, and family. It’s this rich tapestry of character work as well as historical fiction. While the beginning with the character POV switches was confusing, I ended up understanding it and sinking in, it was just a bit disorienting at the beginning.
A Sea of Spectres is about the ghosts throughout our bloodline. It’s also about the powers we have and whether we chose to use them. The powers and sacrifices which are required. There are these pivotal moments in our lives which either are ones we wish we could have sacrificed it all for versus ones where we might have and regretted it. It’s not something we can know in the moment. There’s all these layers of the past all over each other like a palimpset. A Sea of Spectres asks us what we would do for our family. All to protect them the best we can.
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Find A Sea of Spectres on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, & Blackwells.