The Spectator BEST CHILDREN'S BOOKS 2024

Tove was 12 and Liva 9, when the Germans occupied Norway. They remember everything as if it happened yesterday. A middle grade story of bravery, resilience, rivalries and shadow creatures in the night.

Mose and her daughter Agna are incomers in the village, treated with suspicion. But young Liva, left out of the secrets her sister Tove and brother Hakken share, idolises Agna and follows her everywhere. Unwittingly, they lead the German soldiers to a perfect island. Once a haven for picnics and story-telling under the midnight sun, it is transformed into a grim POW camp. This is an unlikely place to find buried treasure, but it's there.

Friendships are made and broken, family trust is turned upside down and lives change forever as Tove and Liva recall their childhood experiences of living through WW2 in a story that moves from light to darkness to light again.