The ‘Young Adult’ genre was loosely defined as long ago as 1802 by Sarah Trimmer. Well known titles in this category include books also treasured by adults such as Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and, much more recently, the Harry Potter series. These books have in common more than the fact that they are written for the so-called young adult or, indeed, for the young at heart. It is that they recount events that could not possibly have happened and yet somehow they read as credible. What is it that allows Alice to grow and shrink, what is it that lets animals speak, what makes readers suspend their disbelief over platform 9¾?
Thicker Than Water also tells a story that includes events that do not happen in the real world, although most of the story takes place in a realistic setting. The reader is thrust into an American small-town environment, in which a dreadful murder has been committed. There are few, if any, clues as to the culprit, though one suspect is treated as guilty from the start.
This is a fantasy and crime novel with the story recounted from the point of view of its two main characters: a teenaged girl, Charlotte, entering early womanhood, and a slightly older, strangely gifted young man, Thomas, who in many ways is still a boy. Their characters are reasonably well drawn, and the pace of the story is compelling, and yet Thicker Than Water fails the credibility test, possibly because of the way the reader is introduced to the paranormal aspects of the story. Perhaps this is because the effects of the paranormal are revealed to the reader – indeed, to all the characters in the novel – long before there is any indication that a supernatural explanation is supposed to be taken seriously within the story’s world.
On the other hand, Charlotte’s family – her domineering mother, censorious grandmother and over-protective brothers – would be familiar to many teenagers, as would Charlotte’s attempts to get out from under. Other readers might more readily identify with Thomas’s sense of being lonely and unloved.
In essence, then, this book delivers the tale of two young people facing scary circumstances and in the process coming to know themselves and each other better. The objections of family are coped with, the absence of friends is overcome. So there is plenty here for the reader to empathise with and enjoy, in spite of the way the paranormal aspects referred to above are handled.
Thicker Than Water
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Imprint: A & U Children
Pub Date: January 2016
