Hidden Treasure

There’s a south shore sayin’: All you do is keep your heart open. And if the river thinks it’s time, the treasure will find you.

It’s 1917 and twelve-year-old Bo Delafort lives with her mum and nineteen-year-old brother Harry near Battersea in London. Bo loves to go mudlarking, often with her best friend, Eddie who lives in the same street with his mother. As the book opens, she makes a wonderful discovery in the Thames mud: a jewel, a perfect, miniature full moon decorated with rubies and pearls. Not only is it beautiful and clearly very valuable, but when she touches it, Bo seems to hear the river talking to her and sees visions, a man and woman she doesn’t know. With a new friend, Billy River, another mudlark this time from the opposite bank to Battersea, she decides to keep the jewel and together they discover its strange history, its supposed magic powers, and its influence on their own personal histories.

This well written adventure story is Jessie Burton’s first middle-grade novel and successfully combines themes of love and loss in a fast-moving, magical adventure story. The river Thames threads through the book bringing various disparate plot lines together and there are wonderfully vivid scenes and a strong sense of setting. With Harry heading off to the front, the First World War casts its shadow over the action too with the jewel offering terrible temptation to Bo when the worst happens. No matter what dangers they face, or what strange discoveries they make, Bo, Eddie and Billy too remain believable child characters, ready to kick the parade of truly wicked adult foes hard in the shins when necessary.

A piece of ambitious storytelling, it successfully conveys the awful grief of loss, the feeling of the temptation to bring a dead loved one back, even as a ghost, is genuine. All that is wrapped up in a fast-moving adventure with child friendly central characters and baddies who really are very bad and come to a suitably unhappy ending. There’s a dramatic climax but there are twists and surprises throughout, treasures to keep readers turning the pages.