I love being back on Sugar Island and with the community from Firekeeper’s Daughter. This book has more wide YA appeal as it focuses on a high school student. There is a lot to learn about reclamation that all readers will learn. I wish the pacing had been tighter. Plot was repetitive at times and action was drawn out. I would’ve liked more intensity to feel more like a heist. Things wrapped up rather quickly and perfectly in the last 20 pages.

** WILL BE PUBLISHED ON APRIL 3, 2023**
My Thoughts:
Angeline Boulley, native Indian author, probably one of 80 right now, worked in DC at Indian Affairs before leaving to become an author. What she brings to this book is an understanding of the bureaucracy of getting artifacts back to tribes. She brings this background into her sophomore book that she dubs "Indigenous Laura Croft, tomb raider." The way institutions are able to hide artifacts to loophole around policy may be fiction, but I am more worried that this just skims the surface and the true extent of grave robbery is even worse than it seems from this book.

I am also obsessed with the warrior girl. How do I learn how to be a tomb raider too? What part can I play in repatriation of my own ancestors? I think if I were a young indigenous kid reading this book, I definitely would like to seek out more answers.

The pacing moves a little slow at times, but the horrors at the end, especially the description of the silo is so purely evil and sick that I read too fast to get to the end and I did not see the twist coming until it was right in. front of me. Sick!

If you already read Firekeeper's Daughter, you will see Daunis show up as the aunt to Perry and her twin.

From the Publisher:
Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.

In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot - will not - stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.

Publication information:
Author: Angeline Boulley

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.

Publication date: May 2, 2023

This book is so beautiful and incredibly informative. I loved how Boulley added in so much information on the reclamation laws/acts and look forward to learning more about this. The book is heartfelt with an excellent mystery attached to it. I especially enjoyed the Daunis update.