Voyage of Pearl of the Seas by Ruth Finnegan

Voyage of Pearl ofthe Seas is an adventure book for preteens written by Ruth Finnegan. It is the prequel to the author’s award-winning epic romance ‘Black Inked Pearl.’

Best friends Chris and Kate, with Kate’s dog Holly, magically make a ship out of a log they found buried under the sand. Though Chris, who plans to fly the ship around the world, wants to name her Dragon, Kate successfully names her Pearl of the Seas.

However, when the time comes to sail, Kate changes her mind and turns her back leaving Chris and Holly to sail without her. Alone and regretful, Kate meets and helps an old man who helps her back in return.

This is a magical story of friendship and adventure. It features a boy and a girl who meet and learn from the kind and wise king called The King of Many Names. While the part I like most is their homecoming which reunites them to their families, the most important part of the book for me is Chris’ sacrifice in order to save Holly. It depicts how friendship is supposed to be.

However, I find the plot of the book somehow convoluted and might be difficult for young readers to follow, while the lessons imparted seem too profound for the same young readers to appreciate. Moreover, several sentences are abruptly stopped and discontinued leaving the readers to finish the sentence themselves. Also, the author seems to have a penchant for one-word sentences that some paragraphs look like a series of sentence fragments. Furthermore, I found the characters under-developed, therefore, not easy to connect with. In addition, the style of writing is not much to my liking (ex. Tumbling whirl skirl fall maul, flapping hair tumbling eyes open shutting fear what now terror hell?) Finally, I noticed some errors within the entire book (like What are holding in your hand? and they shed they burdens in peace).

Still, other readers may find it enjoyable especially those who read Black Inked Pearl.

Congratulations to Ruth Finnegan (@ruth_finnegan) on such a nice book. For more books by the author, click HERE.

Voyage of Pearl of the Seas was OnlineBookClub.org Book of the Day on May 29^th 2018. You may check it out at OnlineBookClub.