Tween stepsisters Kenzie and Quinn try to enjoy what they believe is their final summer together in this thoughtful, luminous middle-grade graphic novel.
Midsummer Sisters by Niki Smith (The Golden Hour; illus. of Sea Legs) opens with red dialogue balloons of Kenzie's dad and Quinn's mom yelling. The young stepsisters (Quinn redheaded and freckled, Kenzie brown-haired and light-skinned with nevus flammeus on her forehead) huddle together under a blanket. Soon, Kenzie's grandma--who sees both girls as hers--sweeps them away to spend the summer with her on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. As a duo, the girls fawn over the local wild horses, especially the herd's vulnerable newborn foal. Individually, Kenzie beach-combs and Quinn texts and video chats with Willow, a friend from home who makes her blush. The sisters' time in close quarters magnifies their disparate ways of handling the divorce and both fear the inevitable: with their parents' divorce, they "will just be strangers."
In this gorgeous ode to horse girls and the magic of summer, Smith portrays a nuanced, messy, and beautiful blended family with painful realism. Kenzie, whose mother died when she was young, particularly embodies the circumstances that can surround a blended family's split: "I'm not even gonna have a mom anymore." An infectious love between the sisters buffers the sadness. Smith's loose-lined illustrations and borderless panels depict expressive features and tons of action. Smith's wild horses seem especially lifelike, manes flowing and gentle eyes gleaming, allowing readers to find in them the same mesmerizing wonder that the sisters do. Spectacular. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer