Foxlight - Katya Balen - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Katya Balen

GENRE: Middle-Grade Adventure

RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A middle-grade novel focussing on a pair of eleven-year-old twins and their quest to look for their mom in the wildlands using a fox as a guide. Outstanding in nature descriptions, but the plot itself, being somewhat abstract, left me with mixed feelings.

Story Synopsis:

Fen and Rey are just two of many children staying in a crumbling house for ‘Found Children.’ Their caregiver Lissa has told them of how they were both found as babies, curled up amid foxes at the edge of the wildlands. Of all the kids in the home, they are the only two with no details about their birth mother.

Fen and Rey are opposite in nature but share a strong bond, Fen has an especially wild imagination, and she always senses a pull from the foxes, wishing to return to the wildlands to search for her mother. When a fox appears at their house late one night, Fen interprets it as a call, and with Rey tagging along, embarks upon an adventurous quest to locate her mother, as she firmly believes that the fox was sent by her mom. Will the two girls be able to find what they are looking for?

The story comes to us in Fen’s first person perspective.

Bookish Yays:

🌳 I liked the characterisation of the two girls. As both of them are contrary in personalities, they bring a nice balance of adventure and caution to the story. Their connection is best seen when they play the ‘Imagine; game together. Though Fen was the narrator of the story, I loved Rey more as her quiet demeanour and bookish creativity won my heart.

🌳 Unlike many MG novels, this one depicts the caregiver at the children’s home in a positive light. Lissa is really good with all the kids and does the best she can with the limited resources.

🌳 The portrayal of the children’s home is also quite sweet, possibly a bit too perfect to be true. There were no bullies, and all the children did their best by each other and by Lissa. Though there are mentions of issues in food quantity and of their tumbledown house, these don’t get much prominence.

🌳 Fen and Rey’s quest into the wildlands was full of adventure. Right from making fire to foraging for food to watching out for animals, the girls went through quite a lot within a few days. Of course, there was a lot of luck on their side as well, which helped them much.

🌳 Katya Balen’s writing always depicts her love of nature, and this story is no exception. The descriptions of all the natural elements - the wilderness, the river, the night sky – are stunningly vivid. It almost felt like I was right there with Fen and Rey, living in the picturesque bush and wondering what to do next. This was the best feature of this story.

🌳 Love the cover illustration as it suits the story perfectly.

Bookish Nays:

🌵 I wish there had been more of Lissa and other characters in the book. A major chunk of the story has only Fen and Rey in the scenes, and this becomes boring after a while. Fen’s first person narration, with its excessive focus on the same few topics, also gets repetitive.

🌵 The foray into the wilderness was brave but also dangerous. The parent in me was a bit disappointed that they weren’t reprimanded even a little for risking their lives by running away without telling anyone.

🌵 Honestly, had I read this book as a middle-grader, I am pretty sure I would have been bored. The combination of too much description and too little action hasn’t worked for me till date. Even when there were some risky scenes on page, the first person narration and its monologues slowed down the intensity of the thrill.

🌵 As a child, I always preferred to have all the answers provided by the end of a story. But this book left me with more questions than answers. The background detailing is also very vague. Is the book historical or contemporary? Or maybe set in the near future when the world is not so green anymore because of climate change? How does Lissa manage to feed so many kids? Why were the houses set so far apart? Was the fox imaginary, or did Fen imagine her connect with the animal? Also, Fen and Rey are twins, but there’s no direct reference to them as such in the entire book. I’d have loved to see more of the twin connection in the story than just have a mention of it in the blurb.

This is my third Katya Balen book, but it ended up my least favourite of the ones I have read. (The remaining two have been five-star experiences.) The adult in me enjoyed the beauty of its prose, but as it is a book for middle-graders, I am trying to rate the book based on how I would have enjoyed it at that age. Unfortunately, the answer is quite clear – this would have been just a one-time semi-interesting read for me during my tweens, which is why I am rounding my rating down.

Recommended to MG lovers of adventure who would love an adventurous story with a wild natural setting but not many clear answers.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and NetGalley for the DRC of “Foxlight”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.