Journey’s End by Rachel Hawkins (review)

Twelve-year-old Nolie is obsessed with scary stories, so she’s pretty psyched to join her scientist father for the summer in the little Scottish town of Journey’s End. Just off the shore there hovers an eerie fog, a fog that many people have entered but from which none have returned. Journey’s End native Bel appreciates the money the “Boundary” has brought her family through tourism, but she’s less interested in its legends or its science; she’s intrigued, however, when she meets and befriends Nolie, and the two decide to hunt down clues about the fog’s origin. It’s all in good fun until they meet Albert MacLeish, a boy who disappeared into the fog one hundred years ago and who has now returned, not having aged a day; it also looks like the Boundary is getting closer. The book’s ambience is wonderfully gloomy and moody, and the tension between tourist business owners and the scientists studying the Boundary adds to the suspenseful atmosphere. At the heart of the story, however, is not the supernatural phenomenon but the slowly developing relationships between the two girls, who’ve both been burned by friends in the past and are wary of trusting again. Though the connection between that story and the fog is somewhat heavy handed, it also leads to a happy ending; readers who like their story’s threads, supernatural or otherwise, neatly tied up will find this journey’s conclusion perfectly satisfying.