Review of The Sea Child by Linda Wilgus

I really liked the magical realism, details of life in 1800s England, the young widow main character, the ocean voyage scenes, and the romance, but I had trouble pinning down the tone and the heart of the story, which followed a somewhat predictable path.

In early 1800s England, Isabel is a young widow who is suddenly poor and plagued by destructive rumors after the Napoleonic Wars. She must flee her London home, and she heads for the Cornish coast where she was once mysteriously washed up as an orphaned small girl, wet and alone.

While grieving her husband George, who she never had enough time to deeply know because of his naval career, she is thrust into a self-sufficient life, learning for the first time to make her own fires, shop at the market and cook, clean her house, and care for herself.

Her kind, adoptive parents have passed on, and Isabel realizes that in her long absence, rich folklore has grown up around her in the community, and the locals largely believe that she is the daughter of a sea spirit, the Sea Bucca. This association carries powerfully held superstitions about her luck and good fortune. Isabel has always been a strong swimmer and loves the water, but she doubts this outlandish fable and her own role in it, although as time goes on she becomes more receptive to the possibility.

When some of the smugglers who regularly run up and down the coast (widely providing eager customers in this area of England with French goods that would otherwise be too dear for anyone to consider) show up at her door with their injured captain, Jack, Isabel thinks of her husband, who suffered deadly injuries in the war and is now gone, and she takes in Jack to nurse him back to health, although this is considered an act of treason.

Isabel is drawn to Jack, and she ultimately feels destined to head to sea--in a time in history when it was unacceptable for a woman to sail, much less sleep on a ship of men. Meanwhile she is trying to figure out the truth about her past.

A local, self-important, creepy Revenue Officer who aims to hang any smugglers he can threatens not only Jack's but Isabel's safety. He is a thorn in the side of the couple. His role in the story, his bad-guy positioning, his threat of sexual predation, and his holier-than-thou views lead fairly predictably to his demise.

The cover of this novel is gorgeous; the seaside setting is a favorite of mine, the ocean voyage is a particular love--and I adore a sprinkle of magical realism in my novels.

I had trouble feeling invested in the novel, however. Wilgus often tells instead of showing, and it was difficult for me to pin down the tone and the heart of the story. The romance is a large element, and in this adventure-romance, as with many romance novels that follow a general pattern, I easily anticipated the broad strokes that occurred. The Jack-Isabel romance was set up cleanly and was clearly going to occur; the bad-guy Revenue Officer was going to serve as the villain; the Sea Bucca was going to serve as a mysterious but key force in an important moment; and Isabel and Jack would end up together.

I especially appreciated the details of life in Isabel's tiny cottage, of the constraints of society of the time, of oceanfaring voyages, and of the swirling romance budding between Isabel and Jack.

I received an electronic prepublication edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Ballantine and a beautiful hardcover edition of this title courtesy of Ballantine Books.

This is Linda Wilgus's first book.

More Seafaring and Related Novels

You might want to check out these Bossy reviews of books about ship life, books set in the seaside, and books about ocean voyages.

For more books set in the 1800s, take a look at these Bossy reviews.