Daughter of the Sea is a wonderful, wonderful book and a must-read! Such powerful writing, such captivating characters, a story that draws you in like the tide in the ocean. It’s mystical, magical, lyrical. Time moves slowly, but suspense and desire and anxiety build and build and build.

Effie has a bleak and lonely life. It’s been that way since her parents died and she went to live with her grandmother, Alice, a healer often thought by the townsfolk to be a witch. She was never accepted in her small fishing village, shunned, avoided, always an outcast. Effie thinks there must be more to life but she doesn’t think she’ll ever experience more than her day-to-day routine. And there is a part of her that doesn’t want to be “just like them.” A strong, stubborn streak in her that doesn’t really want to conform, not if it means repudiating her grandmother and giving up herself. She has Baby Jack, her son, and a fisherman husband who is away more than he is home, but that suits them. And one day she rescues a baby from the sea. The next day she learns her husband John has been lost in that same sea. Bleak, yes, but with Baby Jack and Baby Girl and her grandmother Effie’s life is as full as she ever expected it to be.

There is also Lachlan. Mysterious, maybe a little dangerous, but who lights a fire of desire in Effie. There is a pull between them, a connection. And of course there is Walter, her friend since childhood. He is a good man and wants there to be more between him and Effie. He wants to take care of her. But Walter is very much a product of his time, his place, his upbringing and while Effie truly values him as a friend – one of the few friends she has – something inside her chafes at the idea of letting more grow between them. She fears if she gives in to Walter she may have up something of her essential self.

Daughter of the Sea will transport you to another place, will make you yearn for more for Effie and her babies, and will make you feel everything the characters are feeling: hopeful, hopeless, sad, joyous, pain, sorrow, anger, and fear for what Jack’s life might become if she lets others have their way, and a mother’s fierce love for Morna warring with a mother’s fierce desire to let that child live the best life it can, even if it means giving her up.

Thanks to Harper Collins UK One More Chapter for providing an advance copy of Daughter of the Sea via NetGalley for my reading pleasure and honest review. This is a wonderful story that educated me, enthralled me, enchanted me, made me laugh, made me cry, and kept me engrossed until the very last page. Elisabeth J. Hobbes is an author I will follow from now on. All opinions are my own. ( )