Pirate ships and Bad Parenting

The+Girl+From+Everywhere+Book+Cover.+Photo+taken+by+Ximena+Orozco

“The Girl From Everywhere” Book Cover. Photo taken by Ximena Orozco

In The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig, we are whisked away to beautiful lands by Nix, her father, and their time-travelling ship. Nix’s father, obsessed with finding an 1868 Honolulu map, wants to go back to when the love of his life, Nix’s mother, was still alive. In the process, he might erase Nix’s existence.

Throughout the entire book, there was never any lack of details about the surroundings or events. Heilig provides a description about everything in the story to avoid any confusion as to what is going on or where the events are taking place. There are also the characters themselves; each of them have their own set personalities and morals. Not to mention the diversity of the cast. The main character, Nix, is half-Chinese, half-american; her best friend, Kashmir, is Persian; and one of the crewmates is an African lesbian, leaving readers, like myself, very happy. The story has a satisfying mixture of fantasy, reality, and relationships. There is a dash of romance, but only family relationships play a part in the story. The whole story is about Nix and how she feels her father doesn’t truly care for her or what will happen to her,. The novel also focuses on how she faces these emotions. Another thing that makes the book wonderful are the pirates, but my favorite part of the story is how Heilig weaves the story together. Certain events connect to things that happened hundreds of years ago in unknown lands and occurrences that still haven’t happened.

Heilig comes from Hawai’i, so she knows the beauty of the islands and experienced it first-hand. It is because of this connection that she is able to portray the imagery to us so well it feels as if you’re seeing things through her eyes. With a combination of fantasy and the worries that come with real life, the story is still realistic enough that readers feel they can relate to some of the situations Nix goes though. All in all, I would recommend it to those who have a love for fantasy and are interested in reading about time-travelling pirates. After all, who doesn’t wish they could go back in time to lands that only exist in fairy tales?