Two of those birdheads are Prue Lowry and her older brother. When Annabella is murdered and the island blames Mary, it’s Georgina who risks everything to prove her sister’s innocence.Īt the same time, a bunch of “birdheads,” ornithologists and birdwatchers, are descending on their tiny island of By-the-Sea to catch a glimpse of the rare bird known as Annabella who some believe is actually a Fernweh ancestor. Particularly toward the end after Mary becomes suddenly withdrawn and volatile, their relationship is strained but Leno works marvels by showing it as complex rather than petty or selfish. They clash, as sisters are wont to do, but there’s always love and respect. Mary is outgoing and free with her sexual expression while Georgina is more internal and thoughtful (it doesn’t help that while Mary is straight, there is only one other girl on the island who is openly interested in girls, and she and Georgina recently broke up). The twin sisters couldn’t be more different. And with college looming, a trip which will not only be the sisters’ first time off the island but the first time any Fernweh woman has left, everything is changing faster than they can keep up. If her abilities don’t appear by her birthday, she’ll never get them. Mary already has her magic (she can fly…or, well, float), but Georgina has nothing. With their 18th birthday only a few weeks away, Georgina and Mary Fernweh are running out of time. It misses the heavy conversations about the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and rape culture, the powerful thread of feminism and female friendships, and one of the cutest queer romances of the year. What it describes – a magic-less girl in a magical family and some random old bird – doesn’t even scratch the surface of everything Katrina Leno poured into this novel. Maybe it’s the back of the book description which does the story no favors. When Summer of Salt first came out, somehow it slipped my notice. Over the course of her last summer on the island-a summer of storms, of love, of salt-Georgina will learn the truth about magic, in all its many forms.” (via Goodreads) When tragedy strikes, what made the Fernweh women special suddenly casts them in suspicion. No one questions the (allegedly) three-hundred-year-old bird who comes to roost on the island every year. No one questions the weather, as moody and erratic as a summer storm.

No one on the island of By-the-Sea would ever call the Fernwehs what they really are, but if you need the odd bit of help-say, a sleeping aid concocted by moonlight-they are the ones to ask. But with their eighteenth birthday looming at the end of this summer, Georgina fears her gift will never come. Her twin sister, Mary, already shows an ability to defy gravity. Georgina Fernweh waits with growing impatience for the tingle of magic in her fingers-magic that has been passed down through every woman in her family. “ A magic passed down through generations…

Summer of salt by katrina leno