The Line Tender

Kate Allen's The Line Tender is a funny, heartfelt story for 10 year olds about a girl, her best friend and a great white shark hanging from the town wharf.

What happens

Lucy is almost thirteen. It's a hot July in Rockport, a little fishing town in Massachusetts, and she and her best friend Fred are raiding pay phones for sweet money when the news breaks. A fisherman has dragged in a great white.

For Fred, it's the most exciting thing ever. He knows all the science, and the two of them are making a field guide for a school project (he writes, she draws). For Lucy it's more complicated. Her mum was a shark biologist, the expert everyone would have called about this shark. She died five years ago.

The shark brings all of that rushing back. So does an old clip of her mum on the news that night, smiling straight out of the screen. Then, after a stormy night, the shark is gone from the wharf, and nobody knows where it went.

It's a quiet, thoughtful read, but it's funny too. Lucy's dad is a police diver who pulls on his wetsuit naked in the side yard, in full view of the old man next door (who has opinions about it). Fred is lovely. He's sensible and a little anxious, with his inhaler and his old records, and you can feel how much the two of them look out for each other.

Lucy's grief is written really honestly. She says it's like a circle. She's fine for ages and then something small, like her mum's handwriting in a cookbook, brings it all round again. Anyone who has lost someone might find that very true.

This one sits at the top of the shelf, so here's what's in it. Lucy's mum's death is backstory, it happens before the book begins, but missing her is at the heart of everything. There are a few older touches too. Lucy notices her body changing, gets a sudden urge to kiss Fred and mentions a tampon. Fred buys a jazz album with a swear word in its title.

For a reader who's nearly ready for teen books and loves the sea, sharks or a best-friend story with real feeling, it's a great fit.

What to read next

If it's the sharks that grab them, The Shark Caller has another girl who lives by the sea and longs to learn how to call them in.