Review Detail

Matilda Klein is a girl lost and E.Lockhart weaves a captivating tale of what it takes for her to find herself. Her mother has always flitted them to one boyfriend’s house after another, and Matilda has never had stability. She thinks she finds it when she has a boyfriend and friends, and won’t follow her mother to the next boyfriend. She finds a stable person in Saar, her mother’s ex-boyfriend, who lets her stay. Then her boyfriend and his friends leave her alone and vulnerable to an email invitation to a father whose identity she had never known until then.
With nothing to lose, she travels cross-country to meet this famous long-lost father, only he is not there. She ends up meeting a half-brother, Meer, his mother, June, and 2 other guys staying there. It doesn’t take long for Matilda to realize something is off.
June and her rules make for an unconventional setting. The atmosphere of the book feels mystical and cut off from reality. Matilda gets drugged, yet that isn’t enough of a red flag to run from the house. There is an enemies-to-lovers aspect in her relationship with Tatum. Even with so many things not adding up, she doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, and she really wants the validation of a father she’s never met. So, she continues to wait for him.
At first, this seems like a separate story from the Sinclairs. The Sinclair name is brought up when Matilda and the boys sneak over to their Island at night, and she learns of the teenagers' deaths from the fire that occurred just before she came. However, when truths are uncovered, the Sinclairs are at the heart of why she never had a father capable of raising her.
Overall, this strange twisty tale fits into the Sinclair saga quite well. There are spoilers about the first book, so it is better to read this one in publication order. It happened to be a rainy day when I read this book, which complements the tale with Matilda’s character being adrift, even though it was summer and sunny in the book.