Elizabeth Wein: Pearl Thief (2018, Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers)
336 pages
English language
Published Nov. 9, 2018 by Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers.
Sixteen-year-old Julie Beaufort-Stuart is returning to her family's ancestral home in Perthshire for one last summer. Her grandfather's death has forced the sale of the house and estate and this will be a summer of goodbyes. Not least to the McEwen family, Highland travellers who have been part of the landscape for as long as anyone can remember, loved by the family, loathed by the authorities. Tensions are already high when a respected London archivist goes missing, presumed murdered. Suspicion quickly falls on the McEwens, but Julie knows not one of them would do such a thing and is determined to prove everyone wrong. And then she notices the family's treasure trove of pearls is missing.
I felt like this took a long time to get going, but the last half was spectacular.
It shed a lot of interesting light on how Julie of Code Name Verity became the person she did, and the complex handling of teenage sexual awakening/sexual vulnerability/class was remarkable.
