A rumour of otters by Deborah Savage

A rumour of otters Reviews

• 
  Jennifer

  Sweet little book for a kid to read. I believe in otters (waitoreke).
  
  If this weren't a kids' book I'd want to critique it more harshly. The kid probably didn't learn too much. Zero consequences for making dangerous choices. Someone isn't always going to be there to rescue you. But overall the otter imagery is nice.
• 
  JJ W.

  What a strange book. Definitely recommended in terms of good YA fiction, but I can't decide if I really like it. The characters are a tad flat in their New Zealand sheep farm, but there are otters! And otters are my favorite animal. Which is totally why I picked this up in the first place.
  In the beginning, it feels like it's going to be another YA novel about finding yourself and damn the people around you, and there would be triumphant and uplifting orchestral scores if it wasn't a book. And it was...but it wasn't, also. I mean, it wasn't just that. It kind of feels like a girl's version of "Hatchet", actually, with the little struggles against natural forces, and there are growing up moments for the dog and the brother as well as the main character, and it's just, it's just...good. I realize this is lame, and a terrible review, but I can only tell you that this is a much better book than I thought it would be and I totally believe this family dynamic and this is one of the best examples of third person omniscient narrative that I've read, which is cool because that's a hard narrative to nail. So yes. Good read. Very quick, too.
• 
  Jill

  If you like adventure novels for teens or a little younger, this is a great book about a teenager who wants to be accepted by her father, but who doesn't quite fit in with the rest of her sheep-herding family in rural New Zealand. It's a little bit like
  My Friend Flicka but with less emphasis on the horse and more emphasis on self-discovery and self-reliance. Alexa sees how she is treated differently than the boys around her and she goes out into the mountains to find otters than an old man used to tell her about. It is a quiet, contemplative novel, best suited to avid readers who don't need constant action and suspense to hold their attention.
• 
  Judy

  The first third of the book rates about 2.5 stars.
  
  I picked up this book because of its setting and the reference to otters. Savage's overall plot is promising, but the book would have benefitted from a stronger editor (did it have an editor?). The plot discrepancies bothered me, as did the uniform sentence structure, and there was too much repetitive description.