Our Castle by the Sea: winner of the Young Quills Award 2021

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Danger is building all around them: German U-Boats off the coast, potential spies everywhere, and bombers flying over the village in the middle of the night and heading for London. It was a bad time to be German or Jewish or many other identities during World War II. Mutti is German, and as the threat of war begins to build around them, many people of Stonegate start to treat the family differently. If, like me, you love a lighthouse setting, you’ll love Emma Carroll’s brilliant 2017 novel Letters from the Lighthouse – a moving and intriguing Second World War tale featuring brave young heroine Olive Bradshaw and her little brother Cliff. When they are evacuated from London to a lighthouse on the coast of Devon, Olive begins to unravel a strange and dangerous mystery. This book is a wonderful piece of literature, perfect for everyone. This story will drag you unto it like the Wyrm dragged the ships to the bottom of the ocean floor.

The slow dismantling of Petra’s faith in her loved ones adds a delicious instability to the growing unease of this WWII thriller A sea mist must have risen as Pa was telling the story; tendrils of it seemed to be creeping across the cliff. I was aware of the four stones surrounding us, watching us. I could almost hear them breathing. My heart was thudding in my throat now. I heard a whispered song, as soft as the hiss of sea foam over pebbles, the swish of a sea breeze through a long white dress. This was a very enjoyable and interesting story set in Kent, England during WWII. The story starts in happier times when Mutti, Pa and their daughters Magda and Petra live in a lighthouse called the castle. Since they were small they have known about the legend of the standing stones that guard the lighthouse and enjoy their father's stories about them. They enjoy their lives by the sea and help their father with his lighthouse duties. When war comes attitudes change towards their mother who is German and their Italian friend who runs the bakery. Life becomes hard and Petra who already suffers from anxiety struggles to get through these unhappy times. I love the ideas bit at the beginning of writing a book, when the layers of narrative are starting to fit together and the characters are coming to life. The first draft can be really exhilarating to write. The editing process is, in all honesty, a bit more gruelling, although sometimes I really enjoy the challenge of slotting in new scenes or making big changes, and it is hugely rewarding to see the story take its final shape.A new man has recently moved to a cottage near the "castle" lighthouse. The kids call him "Spooky Joe" because he doesn't socialize much and seems cranky. I have to commend the author for NOT making him a stereotype. He shows some character growth at the end. Kipper Briggs, the village bully boy also shows some character growth as the war affects his life. He starts off as a typical bully and of course there's a reason why and Pet reflects on how he could be different if x was different- a typical plot device in novels for tweens. Mrs. Baron the headmistress is a typical grande dame of village society. She's firm and tries to be fair. Her character arc surprised me but didn't. Her son Michael is everyone's darling. Handsome, smart and friendly, Michael endears himself to a lot of people, especially girls. I was surprised by his plot and completely missed the clue. I learned so much from this book and felt the story many times. Then I would close the book and dream of the lighthouse and everyone in it. Do you have a favourite part of the writing process? Do you have a least favourite part? “…the outline for Book 3 is slowly taking shape!” I really liked Petra (or Pet, the main character) because she was very determined to find out all the secrets, which she found to do with her family, which she had no clue about. She also thought a lot about her family and cared for them a lot. Petra was also very brave. I didn’t really like Kipper Briggs at the start, who was quite a rude boy and a bit showy-off, but in the middle/end part of the story deep down he was a kind person and a helpful one. In the end when Kipper Briggs started being nice the really kind boy (or so we thought) Michael was really helping the Germans with his mother and turned out to be really cruel and rude.

Now, as the war breaks out, childhood stories give way to terrifying real life battles as German war machines lurk in the skies above and the sea below. Fear is in the air and it is not long before the people of the nearby village turn on Pet’s mother, who is German. What’s more, Pet’s older sister is acting suspiciously and Pet discovers a set of mysterious documents and photographs hidden away in the lighthouse. As soon as the main editing of one book is finished I start to get excited about the next book (I’ve got about three books in my head at the moment, fizzing around like frustrated fireworks – it’s very distracting . . . ) Because Nightingale Wood was so well-received by readers, I suppose I was aware when I was writing Our Castle that people were likely to compare the two, so I wanted it to be a worthy follow-up, but of course I wanted it to be a good book anyway – and special too, in its own unique way. The hardest thing about Nightingale Wood was the editing process – we cut 46,000 words in total. I didn’t want to go through this again with Our Castle, so I tried to keep things tighter and more focused as I worked my way through. It was definitely a different writing process!

The Primary School Library Alliance is calling on the government to match-fund the private investment it has brought into helping primary schools c... My new children’s novel, Our Castle by the Sea, is set in a lighthouse on the chalky cliffs of Kent. Twelve-year-old Petra’s world has always been one of storms, secret passages and stories about sea monsters, but when the Second World War begins and Petra’s neighbours start to turn upon her and her German mother, the clifftops that she has known all her life suddenly become a terrifying battleground. Why the lighthouse is fiction's perfect setting This is a brilliantly evocative and controlled narrative. Lucy Strange writes her characters so convincingly that readers invest in their every emotion, hope and fear. Readers will come away feeling like they have walked right alongside Pet, experiencing all the sights and sounds of wartime England as seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl trying to make sense of it all. Bestselling author Alexandra Christo, author of TikTok sensation To Kill a Kingdom, introduces her new book, The Night Hunt (Hot Key Books), a dark...

A lighthouse and coastal cave provide an equally atmospheric setting in Tim Bowler’s powerful psychological thriller, Storm Catchers. Suitable for more mature middle-grade or YA readers, the story features the kidnapping of the protagonist’s sister, and a web of devastating family secrets that he must untangle on his mission to rescue her. Young readers who enjoy fiction at its nail-biting, cliff-hanging best will not be disappointed. Our Castle by the Sea is set at the very beginning of the Second World War. It is about a twelve-year-old girl called Petra Zimmerman Smith who lives in a lighthouse on the white cliffs of Kent with her unpredictable big sister, her English father and her German mother. When the war begins, and it becomes clear that there is a traitor in the village, the local community turns against Petra and her family, but can her beloved ‘Mutti’ really be to blame? De 12-jarige Pet woont samen met haar ouders en zus in een vuurtoren, die ze in gedachten 'ons kasteel' noemt. Dit is het perfecte decor voor de avontuurlijke Pet, die graag rondzwerft door de verborgen tunnels en opgroeit met griezelige verhalen over legendarische zeemonsters. Aan haar zorgeloze bestaan komt abrupt een einde wanneer de Tweede Wereldoorlog uitbreekt. In eerste instantie lijkt dit nog ver weg, maar algauw neemt de spanning in het gezin toe. Pet is vastberaden om erachter te komen welke geheimen het gezin voor haar verborgen houdt. Schools are spoilt for choice when it comes to stories set in World War 2, but this new book by Lucy Strange absolutely deserves its place as a worthy addition to the list.A weird thing happens to me when I am frightened. I freeze. Like a startled rabbit. My whole body stiffens and I can't move at all. People use the word petrified to describe feeling afraid, but it really means much more than that - it means being so terrified that you cannot move a muscle; it means being turned to stone." Amongst all the hatred, we see the great lengths people go to to protect their loved ones. All of Pet’s family are hiding things to try and protect each other - it doesn’t matter what happens, family always comes first. The polarising characters of Pet and Mags play out beautifully together. Pet is frightened, lonely and feels small and unimportant contrasted with Mags who is bold, brave and fearless. It is Pet though that grows most as a character - her wartime experiences see her overcome her fears, face dangers head on and face the startling truth about her family. Mags may be the loud and brave one and Pet the small and quiet one, but they are each going to have to change. Mutti has been accused of drawing maps and diagrams of the English coast for the German army. She is then declared an "enemy alien" and sent away to an internment camp. Pet doesn't know who to trust anymore, even in her own family. All she knows is that she needs to solve all these mysteries that Mags, the " "half -tamed tornado", wouldn't have the patience to help her with, even if Petra could trust her. Someone set fire to the Local Defense Volunteers hut, someone is sending vital intelligence about their coastline to the German army, and someone is trying to tamper with the Castle. It's up to Pet to find who is doing these acts of treachery that her Mutti is being blamed for.