Our Last Echoes

Our Last Echoes

YA fantasy chiller
"I'd composed the lie on the way over. People disappeared on
this island. Trying to come up with a logical explanation for what had
happened, saying that I'd seen them die or something--that would just
lead to more questions I couldn't answer. But the inexplicable? The
people here were used to not digging too deeply."
Sophia, protagonist of Kate Alice Marshall's Our Last Echoes,
has just aged out of foster care. She was orphaned at three. She'd
never been told anything more than that her mom had died in an
accident in Montana. Only a mysterious girl has just told her that
her mom disappeared from an isolated island, Bitter Rock, in Alaska.
Sophia wants to know the truth. She talks herself into an
internship at the Landon Avian Research Center. It's the only
enterprise of any kind on the island. It's where her mom had been
working when she vanished.
"I'd done my research before I came here. I knew my mother
wasn't the first to disappear from Bitter Rock. There was the
Krachka. Landontown. And, in 1943, there was a tiny army outpost.
Thirteen men, an airstrip, and a few planes."
Bitter Rock is eerie from the moment Sophia first sets foot on
it. There's the terror that prevents anyone from setting foot outside
when the mist enfolds the island. There's the ghost story of the girl
in the boat. And there are increasingly bizarre incidents that point
to a malevolent supernatural entity and its minions.
Will Sophia, like her mother, become one of those people who
venture to the island and never return?
Only one way to find out. Just not right before bed. Perfectly
crafted alternate realms and their interactions with the one we
inhabit make Our Last Echoes superlatively scary.
On a purrrsonal note, I had a wonderful surprise Monday. Awhile back
the grad students in my program got an invitation to write a proposal
for a 50 minute presentation at a student conference that will happen
next semester. I sent one in. After awhile I thought it hadn't been
accepted. Monday I learned it had. It will be about my backpack
project and how people can use what I've learned to create their own
projects. Pre COVID me would have been all "OMG! What have I done?"
New me is all "I've got this!" How can some good things come out of
something as totally crappy as a pandemic? (Jules)
Many cats got adopted because of the pandemic. That's a very good
thing. (Tobago).
A great big shout out goes out to the University of Maine's nursing
school that has been earning big time accolades recently. Nurses and
nursing students are some of the most courageous and dedicated
pandemic superheroes in our midst.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway




Sent from my iPod