Fledgling

Lucy Hope's Fledgling is a dark, gothic mystery for 11 year olds about a girl who finds something that shouldn't exist lying on her bed after a storm.

What happens

Cassie Engel lives in a house on top of a tall rock, high above a Bavarian forest. Every generation of her family has added another floor, so it's now a wobbly tower of rooms (with a lift you ride down a pole and a steam cannon to fire you back up!).

One stormy night something taps at her window. When she opens it, a soaking bundle shoots past her ear and lands on the eiderdown. She thinks it's a barn owl. It isn't. It has four tiny wings, a baby's face and skin like paper.

Her only friend, Raphael, the cobbler's son, thinks it's a cherub. An ancient book in the family library says cherubs are sent to Earth only for the most important missions. Scrawled in the margin is a word about storm hawks, and Raphael goes very quiet when he sees it.

It's a super atmospheric read. The house creaks and clanks, thirty-eight stuffed owls stare out of their glass cases, and Cassie keeps the whole place running (the plumbing included). You really feel how alone she is with all of it.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Home life here is bleak. Cassie's grandma is dying upstairs, and Cassie turns up the morphine pump herself. Her mother drinks schnapps and there's broken glass after her rages. Her papa is still damaged by the war and falls asleep by the fire with an empty bottle. None of it is gory, but it's heavy. If your reader has watched a grandparent be very ill, those scenes might be hard going.

For a reader who likes their stories shivery and their heroines capable, though, it's a treat. The cherub is genuinely strange and a bit unsettling, which makes it far more interesting than a cute pet. Who else is looking for her? And why does she make Cassie feel so weak?

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Lucy Hope's Wren has the same chilly feel. Wren lives in a house with a tower and battlements by the sea, she's sure she heard it singing, and she'd much rather be out in her coracle than at breakfast with her disapproving pa.