Targeted for middle grade readers, Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson features twelve-year-old Kaylani McKinnon. Given her focus on being strategic about #operationFREEDAD, Kaylani has no time for frivolity. So, when her mother suggests a summer of fun at the vacation home of a family friend in Martha’s Vineyard, this Brooklyn-based girl is resistant. After all, she has pre-law camp to consider if she hopes to get her wrongfully accused dad out of prison.
When Kaylani arrives, she is even more certain that this place is not her jam. As the ferry docks in the town of Oak Bluffs, Kaylani feels like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: “It’s like a dream so unreal, so storybook beautiful, it almost makes sense that the boat would be my own tornado” (24). With its carousels, gingerbread houses, beaches, ice cream shops, and presidential residences, Kaylani realizes she’s not in Brooklyn any more. “Watching all the rich Black people walk around in fancy clothes, living in million-dollar homes, driving cars that cost as much as some people make in a year. . . make [Kaylani] realize how different they are. No one is broke, or worried about how they’re going to put food on the table, or has a father in prison. Everyone here glows like they ate the sun for dinner” (126-127).
However, as time goes on, Kaylani encounters unwelcoming attitudes, secrets, and suspicious behaviors that inspire a fear that there are sharks on land as well as in the sea. When Chadwick Cooper’s death is ruled a homicide and not a shark attack, this funny, smart girl with a good heart starts sleuthing. Being a “good ear hustler,” according to her dad, and using her “stay sharp, eyes open” instincts, Kaylani goes to work. What she uncovers will not only surprise readers but may get Kaylani killed.
- Donna