{"id":45333,"date":"2025-06-12T23:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T03:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45333"},"modified":"2025-06-12T23:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T03:29:10","slug":"review-of-candle-island-by-lauren-wolk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45333","title":{"rendered":"Review of Candle Island, by Lauren Wolk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Candle Island<\/em><\/p>\n

by Lauren Wolk<\/p>\n

Dutton Children\u2019s Books (Penguin Random House), 2025. 340 pages.
\nReview written June 12, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy sent by the publisher.
\nStarred Review<\/p>\n

Wow. Lauren Wolk has done it again \u2013 a powerful middle grade novel that gives you all the feels. It turned out it was the perfect length to read on a flight from Virginia to Portland, Oregon \u2013 and it left me in awe. (I\u2019m going to leave it behind with one of my nieces in Oregon \u2013 they\u2019re in for a treat!)<\/p>\n

This is a novel about secrets. We get a list in the Prologue:<\/p>\n

Six mysteries waited for me on Candle Island.<\/p>\n

One involved a bird.<\/p>\n

The second, a hidden room.<\/p>\n

A song the third.<\/p>\n

A poet the fourth.<\/p>\n

A cat fifth.<\/p>\n

A fire sixth.<\/p>\n

Each of them exciting in its own way.<\/p>\n

But none more interesting than the mystery I took with me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book opens as Lucretia Sanderson and her mother arrive on Candle Island in Maine. They\u2019re coming in summertime, but they\u2019re not summer people \u2013 they\u2019ve bought a furnished house, and they\u2019re planning to stay.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d left their home in Vermont after Lucretia\u2019s father died in a car accident, hoping to get some distance from painful memories. But they also left to get away from journalists who have been hounding her artist mother after a New York gallery sold a Sanderson painting to the First Lady, and it\u2019s hanging in the White House.<\/p>\n

The first mystery \u2013 finding an abandoned baby bird not in a nest and figuring out what kind it is \u2013 is the simplest, and gets Lucretia exploring the island. They find lots of tension between the summer people and the island kids \u2013 and the island kids are pretty skeptical of Lucretia and her Mom. It doesn\u2019t help that they\u2019ve moved into the house of a girl who lived there three years ago and whose parents died after she moved out.<\/p>\n

We do find out about Lucretia\u2019s secret about halfway through the book, and it\u2019s indeed the most interesting, and the most momentous one. Can she keep her secret? Can she make new friends if she does? And what about the secrets other people are keeping?<\/p>\n

So this is a book about mysteries and secrets and knowing whom to trust \u2013 and feeling safe enough to share your secrets with people who have earned that trust.<\/p>\n

And bottom line, this is a beautiful book set on a beautiful island off the coast of Maine. It will linger in your heart.<\/p>\n

laurenwolk.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Childrens_Fiction\/candle_island.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Candle Island by Lauren Wolk Dutton Children\u2019s Books (Penguin Random House), 2025. 340 pages. Review written June 12, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy sent by the publisher. Starred Review Wow. Lauren Wolk has done it again \u2013 a powerful middle grade novel that gives you all the feels. It turned out it was the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,21,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-contemporary","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45337,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45333\/revisions\/45337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}