Meredith (Trying to catch up!)'s Reviews > The Night Ship

Heartbreaking

4.5 stars

The Night Ship is a novel about two children whose stories intersect 300 years apart.

1629: 9-year-old Mayken, a dutch girl from an affluent family, boards the Batavia for a months-long journey to her new home in the Dutch East Indies. What she finds aboard is a world of wonder, not only begging for exploration but also a world that puts her life in danger.

1989: 9-year-old Gil is sent to live with his grandfather in Beacon island, Australia, after suffering the loss of his mother. The island is the site near the Batavia shipwreck, where the survivors fought for their lives. Mayken is thought to haunt the island.

Both characters are riveting. Mayken is impish and fascinated with the world of the boat and the characters who inhabit it. Gil is awkward, lonely, a little weird, and terrified of the world. His only friend is a 900-year-old tortoise named Enkidu.

Casts of eccentric characters inhabit both worlds.

Both stories are linked through dutch and Australian folklore, although there are a lot of additional commonalities between the two children as they are bound by loss, grief, and trauma.

This was a fascinating read for many reasons. Surprisingly, this novel prompted me to read more about the shipwreck of the Batavia and the horrors the survivors faced.

The Night Ship is a slow-paced, character-driven story. I became attached to Mayken and Gil, and it was hard to say goodbye to their characters. This is not a novel that one can casually flip the pages while reading; it is a heavy read that evokes dread, tension, fear, and heartbreak.

A special shout out to the sour-faced tortoise Enkidu, who always made me smile even while reading some of the horrors that Mayken and Gil had to cope with!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Atria Books in exchange for an honest review.