Bound To Stay Bound

Other - 10/21/2024 Huang explores one anxious tween’s relationship with the sea and her ancestry in this fantastical debut. Chinese and Taiwanese American 13-year-old Kaya Song, who lives in the Hawaiian surf town of Lihiwai, grapples with hydrophobia following multiple near drownings. Her fear also exacerbates her "never-ending anxiety," which she tries to alleviate via scratching ("I wore my hair down and pulled on a long‑sleeve top to hide the new scratches I had anxiously scraped into my skin"). But when her best friends, native Hawaiian Iolana and blond-haired Naomi, pull Kaya away from her beloved books and persuade her to go surfing, Kaya inexplicably saves someone from drowning. This becomes the first of many strange new interactions with the water. Kaya keeps her worsening anxiety and recent development with the ocean hidden from her parents, but when her aunt and cousin visit from N.Y.C. for "Christmas in Hawaii," Kaya learns about the water goddess Mazu and her connection to Kaya’s family history. While the premise is intriguing, the integration of fantastical elements and flashbacks relating the Song family history throughout Kaya’s more grounded challenges managing her anxiety is somewhat clumsy. Ages 8-12. Agents: Laura Cameron and Amanda Orozco, Trans- atlantic Literary. (Jan.) - Copyright 2024

School Library Journal - 01/10/2025 Gr 5 Up—A promising debut fantasy novel. Kaya, 13, has been dealing with a lot. Her anxiety is getting worse and her parents, Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants to Hawaii, are busy running a struggling restaurant. She's developed a nervous skin-picking habit that she tries to hide from her best friends. When strange things start happening whenever Kaya is around water, she learns that she may be a descendant of a water goddess. Will she be able to control her new power before disaster strikes? Huang has written an excellent story that doesn't attempt to fit an entire hero's journey into 250 pages. Instead, readers stay with Kaya on the island as she first discovers her powers and learns to accept them. The characters are diverse without being tokenized, including native Hawaiians and other Asian and Pacific Islander characters. The relationship between Kaya and her bully of a cousin, Anne, feels painfully realistic. Kaya's reasonable fear of the water and the symptoms of her anxiety blur together sometimes, which can feel like a messy but not unrealistic representation of what it's like to have an anxiety disorder. VERDICT This compelling novel will leave readers hoping for a future sequel. Hand to readers of the "Rick Riordan Presents" series, and tell them this is even better.—Jeri Murphy - Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.