In Lark, Sally Watson took readers down a most interesting path and gave us a delightfully fun adventure. There are some aspects of the story that parents may wish to be aware of, which I note in my review, but overall, it was an entertaining escapade well-suited to teen readers. As much as I wanted to follow the family tree, I decided to read Jade next, as it is also available at Audible (recorded via Virtual Voice).
My spoiler-free review is very short: I did enjoy it. I will have it in my library. But, I will be cautious about to whom I recommend it. It is about a strong female protagonist from Colonial Virginia whose family is in the slave trade. Through a series of events, Melanie (nicknamed Jade) finds herself on a ship in the Bahamas attacked by pirates, and she joins their forces. She becomes a notorious outlaw, and this story is a rollicking fun ride. As much fun as this novel is, I found a number of challenges that mar the overall story for me, and I think parents may wish to know about some hefty content.
The rest of this review will contain a fair number of spoilers with a lot of quotes. I hope to let Sally Watson tell you for herself what she was doing in this story. You then can decide for yourself how to handle this with your readers.
Spoilers
My thoughts:
Jade has the right ideas but, by her own admission, she goes to the rebellious extreme at all times. And this does not make her a great heroine. Instead, I find her to be a petulant teenage idealist who crashes through life without regard for anything other than her own will. Not only does this grate on my nerves, but it makes for a dull one-dimensional character. When pre-reading for teenagers, I am particularly concerned that she would encourage an extremist attitude in them as well.
And, here’s where I struggle with this book: the people and prejudices that Jade is raging against deserve her wrath and our scorn. The racism of her family is vile. The English laws regarding women as little more than property are equally vile. She is right to be outraged by these things. And so, I have a hard time objecting to her war against all of society.
I am, however, left reading this with a key question: what good will my readers find in this story?
They will find high-quality language. They will find a rightly ordered contempt for racism, slavery, and misogyny. They will even find an exciting story.
However, they will also find a story in which rebellious, discontented teenagers are rewarded for socially unacceptable behavior that includes a lust for adventure up to and including the killing of enemies.
I will end this review with one of my favorite quotes from Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins:
“It does seem to me that someone might write stories that should be lively, natural and helpful tales in which the English should be good, the morals pure, and the characters such as we can love in spite of the faults that all may have.”