Hurricane Child

Caroline is twelve and was born during a hurricane, which everyone on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands counts as bad luck. Her classmates bully her, a spirit that only she can see trails her everywhere, and her mother walked out one day and never returned.

Things shift when Kalinda joins the school. She comes from Barbados, speaks quietly, and has a particular smile for each person she meets. She becomes Caroline's first friend, and Caroline starts to realise she has a crush on her.

The book is a middle-grade story with a ghostly strand and a coming-of-age core. Caroline has to make sense of her feelings for another girl. She also has to deal with the spirit that stalks her across the islands, and find out why her mother left.

The search for her mother leads Caroline and Kalinda out into a hurricane. The storm and the fear of losing her mother for good drive the final stretch. The tone stays close to Caroline's own point of view, lonely at the start and warmer as the friendship grows.