Where You Left Us

July 15, 2023
Two sisters grapple with their father's depression and their own mental health struggles in this Australian novel. Cinnamon and Scarlett Prince are well known in their seaside town--their father's fame from a 1990s band plus their family's rambling home atop Princes Beach being the site of a tragedy from the 1960s that's infamous in local lore mean there is no hiding. Older sister Cinnamon guards her feelings; younger sister Scarlett hoped to leave her anxiety attacks behind when she went to boarding school. Their reunion over the summer following Scarlett's graduation is not a happy one for the estranged sisters. It's made worse by the appearance of their divorced mother, who shows up after Scarlett contacts her once she sees how poorly their dad is doing. Weaving in family secrets, complicated love interests, and realistic depictions of the sisters' feelings and internal musings, this novel flavored with gothic romance and mixed with the often funny, self-effacing narrative voices of the girls packs a lot in. The tender awkwardness of both of their burgeoning relationships--Cinnamon's with her co-worker Daisy and Scarlett's with Will, Cinnamon's ex-boyfriend--is sweet and swoonworthy. The family mystery that runs as an undercurrent throughout feels a little tacked on in places but wraps up nicely in the auspicious ending. The sisters are white; Cinnamon is bisexual, as is biracial Daisy, who is Chinese and white. A poignant, engaging coming-of-age story. (Fiction. 14-18)

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June 28, 2022
Rhiannon Wilde’s second YA novel, Where You Left Us, is as bewitching as her Glendower Award–winning debut Henry Hamlet’s Heart. It follows the two Prince sisters, Cinnamon and Scarlett, who have finished school but have not yet begun their adult lives. Scarlett returns to their ancestral home on the cliff, where Cinnamon has been living with their severely depressed former rock-star father. The long-standing conflict between the sisters is presented through dual perspectives of the two imperfect but exquisitely real characters. While Cinnamon both desires and fears intimacy with her new co-worker Daisy, Scarlett grows close to Cinnamon’s best friend and former boyfriend, Will. Threaded through the novel is Scarlett and Will’s investigation into the scandalous rumours about the sisters’ great aunt Sadie’s disappearance. The persistently crashing waves of Princes Beach below Halcyon House and the empty grave of Sadie, discovered in a storm, strongly evoke the mental health challenges faced by the Prince family. The sense of a family curse plaguing the notorious ‘Mad Princes’ knowingly draws on the Gothic tradition but the novel’s depiction of mental illnesses is entirely modern. Similarly, the novel’s representation of sexuality and sex is positive, direct and unequivocal. Wilde displays a talent for transforming the terror and intense emotion of the Gothic into a transformative novel for teens and adults. Recommended for fans of The Monster of Her Age by Danielle Binks, for readers aged 14 and up. Ilona Urquhart is a children’s and youth services librarian on the Surf Coast and has a PhD in literary studies.

August 9, 2024
Grades 9-12 Halcyon House looms over a stretch of Australian beach and has sheltered generations of the Prince family, including the infamous Sadie Prince, who allegedly murdered her boyfriend and disappeared. Her great-nieces, Cinnamon and Scarlett, are now the youngest members of the family in residence, but they can't stand each other. Cinnamon, 18, is the primary caretaker for their father Ian, a former rock star who has severe depression, while she also works part-time as a barista instead of going to college. Tensions run high when Scarlett returns from school for Christmas break. When the sisters learn that Sadie might not have disappeared, they pursue the mystery. The characterization is well done; the sisters are opposites emotionally, and the secondary characters are well rounded. The characters carry the story in that, while the plot is dramatic, it is everyday drama that most families deal with; what matters here is how the characters handle these elements and the growth they experience along the way.

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