The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Published: February 16th, 2016

by: Greenwillow Books

Genres: YA, Time-Travel, Fantasy

Format: eARC 

Source: Publisher via Netgalley

My Rating: 3 Stars 

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Nix has spent her entire life aboard her father’s ship, sailing across the centuries, across the world, across myth and imagination.

As long as her father has a map for it, he can sail to any time, any place, real or imagined: nineteenth-century China, the land from One Thousand and One Nights, a mythic version of Africa. Along the way they have found crew mates and friends, and even a disarming thief who could come to mean much more to Nix.

But the end to it all looms closer every day.

Her father is obsessed with obtaining the one map, 1868 Honolulu, that could take him back to his lost love, Nix’s mother. Even though getting it—and going there—could erase Nix’s very existence.

For the first time, Nix is entering unknown waters.

She could find herself, find her family, find her own fantastical ability, her own epic love.

Or she could disappear.

 

My Thoughts

After coming down off my Passenger high, I was ready to get back into some time travel adventure. The premise seemed like this would be another one that I would rave about. Sadly, that is not the case. I like this book for it’s beautiful writing, setting, and the time travel. Everything else was just fell flat for me. So, if you read the synopsis, then you get the gist of the story. I just want to break down why this book wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped. Still, it could very well be your type of read.

With the way the time travel is set up and the characters we are reading about, I expected there to be lots of action scenes. Or, at the very least, something to get my blood pumping. I’m all for world building, but there’s too much description here. If there ever was a book with info dumps, this would be it. It dragged, which made me stop reading for days. Then, the love triangle that didn’t even have to be, made me even more mad. Furthermore, it wasn’t resolved, which makes me not want to read the next book but I’m a curious person so I may just give in. I also didn’t like Captain Slate much. Dude, I get that you are heartbroken but think of your daughter. It’s like he was possessed or something. I truly think there was too much story here. It could use a shave of at least 85 pages.

The time travel is not hard to understand. The way they use maps to travel through time, painted a very good picture in my mind. I think the concept is very cool for this type of plot. These are pirates after all, so the maps make total sense. I like Nix, but not enough to brag about her. She’s smart, but sometimes is all over the place. I admire her for thinking ahead, but her and pops are truly not the the best of characters to rely on. I probably would have liked this more had Nix been a boy, or Kash was the main character. I love their friendship, but then the author inserted Blake for tension. Again, the Hawaii setting made for great visuals. I pictured every landscape, body of water, and person in my head. 

Maybe this one just wasn’t for me, but it really was a drag. If it weren’t for the too long bits and the love triangle, I could have easily given this a 4.5. The story isn’t bad, I just would have liked for some things to be different. Like I said, maybe this one just isn’t for me, but a lot of readers love it.