Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea by Ashley Herring Blake

I ate them constantly, insisted on peach-patterned sheets for my bed, and let’s just say a seven-year-old should never be allowed to paint her own nails. Her real name is Penelope, but when she was born, according to my mothers, I was very into peaches.

I’m not about to let this pesky Atlantic Ocean win now. After two years of traveling around the country with Mama and Peach, keeping a keen eye all the while, I’d say I’ve probably saved us from at least a few catastrophes, dozens of minor injuries, and myriad everyday annoyances and mishaps. And don’t even get me started on water beasts, all manner of fascinating yet deadly sharks and jellyfish and god-knows-what-else lurking in the deep. But an ocean a few hundred feet from the front door of our new house might as well be death, all that fog-draped water just waiting for a fresh swimmer to devour, which would be exactly my luck. Soon, Hazel finds herself just as obsessed with the Rose Maid as Lemon is-because what if magic were real? What if grief really could change you so much, you weren't even yourself anymore? And what if instead you emerged from the darkness stronger than before? Read Excerpt To make it worse, she has a daughter Hazel's age, Lemon, who can't stop rambling on and on about the Rose Maid, a local 150-year-old mermaid myth. But when Mama runs into an old childhood friend-Claire-suddenly Hazel's tight-knit world is infiltrated. When the family arrives in Rose Harbor, Maine, there's a wildness to the small town that feels like magic. So for the last two years, the Bly girls have lived all over the country, never settling anywhere for more than a few months. After Mum's death, Hazel, her other mother, Mama, and her little sister, Peach, needed a fresh start.

But when a kayaking trip goes horribly wrong, Mum is suddenly gone forever and Hazel is left with crippling anxiety and a jagged scar on her face.

Hazel Bly used to live in the perfect house with the perfect family in sunny California. For fans of Erin Entrada Kelly and Ali Benjamin comes a poignant yet hopeful novel about a girl navigating grief, trauma, and friendship, from Ashley Herring Blake, the award-winning author of Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World.

Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea by Ashley Herring Blake