about the book
Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards and the Blue Peter Book Awards 2017
From the author of the bestselling tale The Girl of Ink & Starscomes a beautiful new adventure about finding your way home.
There are some places you would not want to go. Even if I told you that we have oceans filled with sea turtles and dolphins, or forests lush with parrots that call through air thick with warmth… Nobody comes here because they want to.
The island of no return.
Ami lives with her mother on an island where the sea is as blue as the sky. It’s all she knows and loves, but the arrival of malicious government official Mr Zamora changes her world forever: her island is to be made into a colony for lepers. Taken from her mother and banished across the sea, Ami faces an uncertain future in an orphanage. There she meets a honey-eyed girl named for butterflies, and together they discover a secret that will lead her on an adventure home. Ami must go back to the island of no return, but will she make it in time?
Published by Chicken House
MY REVIEW
A beautiful book that quietly lures you in with its’ vivid descriptions, and characters that steal your heart.
Ami is the main character who lives on the stunning island of Culion, but it’s a place that people don’t visit as the majority of the inhabitants are lepers. Ami is a healthy child but her mother is ‘touched’ but they are settled in the way they live, but that is all set to change when the government decide to isolate the island even more by moving the healthy family members away – heartbreaking for Ami and her mother.
When Ami begins her new life away at the orphanage she makes new friends, but also makes enemies – Mr Zamora is a ghastly character who is heartless and derives his pleasure from collecting butterflies, and causing misery for those children in his charge.
Ami has such drive and determination in her quest to go home to be with her mother, and that makes her such a wonderful character to read about. She sees beauty all around her – from those ‘touched’ to the butterflies she seems to attract, and this book really is a stunning little story that had me captivated and utterly spellbound.
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