A wonderful book dealing with family and culture and the ways we cling to both. Emlee Baptiste begins the epistolary story when she sends a message in a bottle out from her liminal village, and is eventually brough by a crow to a woman trapped in a hanging temple over a live volcano for her crimes as an insurgent.

Told through diary entries, letters, emails and articles, the story and the connections between the people of a floating strand village weathering their storms (real and personal) and political prisoner Kayamanira Matarayi's fight to bring back her repressed cultural traditions are interwoven, the threads tightening and tightening until Em and Kaya meet in an attempt by Kaya's government to destroy her.

It's a delicate book, drawing the surreal world of myths and faith into the weft of the real world of family-break ups, government oppression and the struggle for freedom with a careful hand.

Definitely worth reading.

This book was part of an Indie Fantasy Bundle from https://storybundle.com/ The narrative has the form of an epistolary book, interspersed with journal entries, and follows the points of views of twelve-years-old Em, living in a seabound small community on the Mexican Gulf and an adult woman, Kaya, imprisoned on a Asian isle volcano for her political views. Through a fateful message in a bottle, they start corresponding. I had a little hard time accepting how the message in a bottle reached a person detained on a prison suspended on a volcano, but then all the landscapes presented and the straits shown are both real-like and fantastic.
I lost interest somewhere in the middle of a Kaya's journal entry around page 40. The premises are nice, and this is not the kind of fantasy book I usually read, but I wanted to give it a try. Probably all the local lore and circumstances described in first person just didn't manage to catch my attention, and the beginning was like being dropped in medias res, to see both the main characters' lives and struggles in snippets just didn't do it for me, even though this is not the first book I've read with this narrative scheme. No rating, I didn't finish the book, nor I read enough to comment on the writing style or plot/character development.

Emlee Baptiste is a 12-year old girl living in Mermaid's Hand, a floating community steeped in tradition, off of the Gulf Coast. The people of Mermaid's Hand consider themselves sea people, protected by the Seafather, who lives under the sea. People in Em's community believe that the Seafather provides everything they need and what they need will come to them, brought in by the tide. Emlee loves her heritage but she longs to visit the seapeople under the waves or explore life on dry land. Em places a letter in a bottle, hoping to receive a response.

Kayamanira Matarayi is a political prisoner on a small island near Indonesia. Kaya is accused of being a separatist leader and sparking an uprising in her small mountain community. The government has placed her in a floating prison known as "Lotus on the Ruby Lake". Ruby Lake is a volcanic crater and the mountain people believe that it is guarded and protected by the Lady of the Ruby Lake. Kaya has a pet crow named Sumi and it is Sumi that delivers Em's letter to Kaya, suspended high above the fire-y lake. Kaya wonders if the Lady of the Ruby Lake is responsible for the strange circumstances in which she received the bottled letter.

Pen Pal is told through the written letters of Em and Kaya, journal entries of both girls, and various government emails. As the story progresses, the relationship between Kaya and Em takes a perilous turn and brings Emlee Baptiste far from the safety of Mermaid's Hands.

I received an autographed copy of Pen Pal in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Message in a bottle - message to the world: extraordinary circumstances lead 2 girls on opposite sides of the world (gulf of Mexico and Indonesian archipeligo)to become Pen Pals.
The unfolding stories are knit together, doubling the tension as each other personal history leads to a single, current affair.
Besides being a damn good read (made short work of a 5 hour train delay) it is the well observed characters that have stayed with me along with a being-there sensation of the sand, the heat and the cooling splashes of water. ( )