Review: JUST KEEP GOING

JUST KEEP GOING by Donna Blaber (2022)

Reviewed by Emily R

Becky always loved visiting her dad in New Zealand until she returns during the pandemic. Now he’s got a baby with her new stepmum and everything has changed. Worse still, her windsurfer hasn’t arrived yet, so there’s nothing for her to do but wait for Mum who is stuck overseas because she can’t get a spot in quarantine.

Then Becky finds a strange stone at Whale Bay and her luck changes. She makes new friends, joins an environmental group, and has several close encounters with a bottlenose dolphin who simply won’t leave her alone. What is the dolphin trying to tell her? Is it sick? And who are the people poaching fish from the marine reserve?

Since Becky arrived in New Zealand recently, she’s felt she is in a foreign country, far from the UK home she knows. True, her Dad is here, but his focus is on his second wife, Becky’s stepmother, and their baby. She has no friends her own age and the pandemic with its lockdown, and the added complication of the MIQ draw, increases her sense of isolation.

She does, though, have a windsurfer and there's a great local beach where she can use it. Not only does this entertain her, but it presents challenges and leads to a mystery.

The story is a very readable light adventure featuring, as well as the joys of windsurfing, environmental concerns, a dolphin that seems to want to communicate something, and a couple of baddies to add to the intrigue. Add to those, a mystical/magical element – not overdone, so acceptable even to sceptics.

The language is colloquial and chosen for the intended audience of 11 to 14 years – yeah na, chur bro.

Just Keep Going is set in Northland, in the Whangarei-Tutukaka-Ngunguru area. 

For those who may need a little help with some terminology, probably overseas readers, there’s a short glossary at the end. The book is attractively produced. Though Just Keep Going fits into the ‘Just’ series of YA titles, this is a stand-alone book.. 

This review was first published in FlaxFlower reviews, which focuses on in-depth reviews of New Zealand books of all kinds, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of Flaxflower founder and editor Bronwyn Elsmore.