A Ravelled Flag (Strong Winds Trilogy) [Kindle Edition]

After making contact with his Great Aunt Ellen and being reunited with his mum, thanks to the help of his friends, Donny now hopes for a normal settled life with his family. Unfotunately with the authorities still on his case and his friend Anna mad at him, Donny finds his life isn't going to be as simple as he'd hoped. So whilst trying to convince the authorities that his Great aunt Ellen can take care of him and his mum, he's also having to live up to the promise he made Anna to help her find her own mother.
Their investigating leads them into the darker side of East Anglia and Donny and his friends find themselves in dangerous territory.
Will they be able to discover the real reason why Annas mum left, or why Flint and Toxic have it in for Donny and his family? With each secret they uncover they learn how deep family ties really run, and how far friendship truly goes?

Having read 'The Salt-stained book' (the first in Julia Jones' strong wins trilogy) i was very eager to read the next installment of this trilogy and with each one i become more and more enthralled. This addition was a little more grittier than the first and i found this quite refreshing to find a book that deals with some real life issues whilst still maintaining it's fantastical swashbuckling quality. Add that to the fact that it's set in the Ipswich area (where i currently live) and that there's still another one to come, and i'm hooked!

I finished reading the first volume in this series at 1.15 in the morning a couple of weeks ago. I finished this one at 11.15 last night, so not so knackered today, thank goodness. By the time I was 2/3rds of the way through this book I couldn't put it down.

This picks up the tale where "The Salt Stained Book" left off, and is even more exciting IMHO (put that in to show I'm nearly as "down with the kids" as the Author). You do need to have read the first book to get the most from this, and a more than nodding acquaintance with Arthur Ransome's stories is useful, but not essential. In this episode characters are developed and broadened; there is a truly wonderful old heroine, some seriously criminal baddies, counterbalanced ultimately by the hero's lovely allies, and good detailed sailing and boat stuff. Oh, and lots of litle homages to Ransome - I only spotted the Mastodon after I'd finished reading.

I can't wholly explain the appeal these stories hold for me, but in part it's having had to deal with some of these people - petty officials in the "caring professions" like those who make the protagonist's life miserable - throughout my 35 year working life as a teacher of teenagers. People who use jargon to confuse instead of to illuminate, people who insist on rigid adherence to rules when flexibility would be so much kinder and more sensible, bullies who use the exigencies of everyday life to humiliate others, and so on. But this is a book for "young adults" I guess - awful term - and it has tremendous narrative drive and empathetic goodies. And such bad baddies . . .

Now I'm waiting for the third and final book. And a small word of advice: don't be tempted by the Kindle edition - the books themselves are delightfully illustrated and produced and definitely enhance the reading experience.

Julia's wide knowledge of sailing and teenagers shines throughout the book. Anyone who has sailed on this coast will recognise that the book has been written by someone who know knows it intimately in all weathers. The book, like the first in the trilogy comes to a satisfactory conclusion but leaves the reader wanting more. I am looking forward to reading the next and last book in the series.