History Literature / IslandOfTheAunts

Three sisters (the eponymous aunts) take care of injured and sick creatures on a tiny island somewhere. They are not becoming any younger, and when, one day, they’re watching a TV show about extinct animals, they suddenly realize that they might go extinct themselves. They need young people to help them and inherit their duties. Therefore, they decide to kidnap kids whom nobody will miss, as the island is top-secret, and just hiring people won’t do. (Their niece and nephew are spoiled children, who really wouldn’t be able to do hard work; the offspring of a sister who found the island unhygienic and fled as soon as she was an adult.) Etta kidnaps Minette, whose divorced parents are constantly fighting and have her travel from one to the other via train on a regular basis. Coral chooses Fabio, who is originally from Brazil, and is just about to be sent to a horrible English school, where it is implied he will be bullied for looking foreign. Myrtle soon decides that the boy she volunteered to babysit, Lambert, is a horrible child, but when he accidentally sniffs her chloroform, she sees no other solution than to take him to the island and let her sisters sort it out.
On the island, Minette and Fabio, after proving themselves by hard work caring for the local fauna, are told about the island’s secret: There are magical creatures, too, a family of mermaids, and a boobrie, a giant bird, and others. The aunts try to keep Lambert ignorant, but he manages to phone his father, and that’s when things become really difficult for the aunts.

* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord: When Mr. Sprott finds about the island and its magic creatures he tries to blackmail the aunts into selling him the island, otherwise he will rat them out to the police.
* BoardingSchoolOfHorrors: Fabio is sent by his grandparents at the horrible Graymarsh Towers to learn being an "English gentleman", while he's mercilessly mistreated and bullied.

* TheBusCameBack: It's mentioned that the sisters were actually five: there is Betty, who didn't like living in the island and becomes a suburban housewife in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Dorothy, an activist who travels the world trying to save rare animals from being served in restaurants. Both sisters eventually appear.
* CassandraTruth: [[spoiler: When Queeny is abducted by Mr. Sprott's henchmen her mother believes she has left with a lover. Her other daughter, who knows better since she was once kidnapped herself, keeps telling that Queeny didn't leave willingly but she's ignored.]]

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Mr. Sprott is a billionaire who owns several activities between UK and America and has other non-specified shady activities that the police are investigating. [[spoiler: He attempts to murder the aunts and the children along with them when they refuse to sell him the island.]]
* DireBeast: The boobrie. A bird of the size of an elephant.

* FamilyOfChoice: Minette and Fabio find the aunt to be more caring than their actual guardians and become their actual [[HonoraryUncle Honorary Aunts]]. The aunts eventually write a will that legally leaves to island to Minette and Fabio once they will have passed away, despite the fact that they have two nephews of the same age, who are perfectly unfit to take care of the island and its creatures.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: At the beginning, the aunts are lamenting how much work there is to do in the island, and how some creatures refuse to leave even after they've been healed. [[spoiler: It's because the Kraken has come out from his retirement and his heading to the island.]]

* GildedCage: [[spoiler: Once Queenie is kidnapped she's kept in the fancy Jacuzzi of Mrs. Sprott's bathroom. She's surrounded by luxury and beautiful things but she's utterly miserable since she is captive to vile, greedy individuals.]]
* HalfBreedDiscrimination: the main reason Fabio doesn't want to go to Graymarsh Towers; he's half-English and half-Brazilian, originally being raised in South America, and bullied relentlessly by his English peers ''and'' looked down upon by his own paternal grandparents. The word itself is never used in the text, but it's quite obvious that all his tormentors are acting out of racism.
* ItsAllAboutMe: All the children's parents and guardians are self-centred and neglectful. For all of them it took no less than a week to notice their children have disappeared. Also during the investigations they release interviews to earn some money out of their tragedy. Mr. Sprott is the worst of the bunch, though, being a CorruptCorporateExecutive who blames [[spoiler: his attempted murder of Minette, Fabio, and the aunts]] on them for not "cooperating" with him and his evil deeds.
* TheKindnapper: The aunts are well-meaning, and originally intended to only kidnap kids who wanted to get away from their ordinary lives, anyway. Lambert was an accident.
* KrakenAndLeviathan: The giant kraken puts in an appearance; you'd be forgiven for not envisioning a traditional kraken as you read, though, since cephalopod-like traits aren't mentioned even once in the whole book. [[spoiler:There's a little one, too; it likes cookies and is quite adorable.]]

** Also it takes ''eight freaking days'' to realize their daughter has disappeared. While it is easier to lose track of a child living between two houses, any sound divorced parent would check the same evening if their daughter is arrived to destination or ask the other parent for explanation instead of buying the words of a stranger.
* PoliceAreUseless: {{Inverted}}. Minette and Fabio's families believe that the police are sitting down doing nothing because they want to blame someone instead of themselves (the children have disappeared mostly due to their neglect) and because they are profiting from releasing interviews where they lament about the investigations, earning a good cash. Mr. Sprott also resolves to go find Lambert by himself when he receives his call instead of alerting the police because he doesn't trust them (he's a CorruptCorporateExecutive and the police are investigating on his shadier businesses). The police are actually doing a fairly good investigation following Mr. Sprott himself but most of the time they are staying silent until they find real evidence.
* SelkiesAndWereseals: Myrtle, the youngest aunt is friends with Herbert, a suspiciously human-like seal. She reads him poetry and plays him classical music with her cello.

* AdultFear:
** Children being kidnapped, anyone? The aunts are not malicious, but you will get goosebumps when Minette's parents (despite being mostly unsympathetic characters) realize that their daughter ''is not living'' with any of them.
** Mr. Sprott invading the island to kidnap the creatures and create a horrible amusement park that will exploit their suffering for cheap laugh. [[spoiler: At the end of the book, he's about to kill everyone from the island--including two children--by throwing them into the sea to drown]].

** Mr. Sprott invading the island to kidnap the creatures and create a horrible amusement park that will exploit their suffering for cheap laugh.

* BreakTheHaughty: Poor [[spoiler:Queeny]], after she's caught by Lambert's father.

* BrokenBird: Queeny's twin Oona, who was taken captive by a lordling on his yacht for several days before escaping. She is incredibly withdrawn and her voice is still hoarse from crying so much.

* CassandraTruth: [[spoiler: When Queeny is abducted by Mr. Sprott's henchmen her mother believes she has left with a lover. Her other daughter, who knows better since she was once kidnapped herself, keeps telling that Queeny didn't left willingly but she's ignored.]]

* DireBeast: The boobrie. A bird of the size of a horse.

* GenderFlip: The traditional fairy tale of the selkie with the human lover is gender-flipped with Herbert, the selkie who isn't completely happy either as a seal neither as a man.
* GildedCage: [[spoiler: Once Queeny is kidnapped she's kept in the fancy Jacuzzi of Mrs. Sprott's bathroom. She's surrounded by luxury and beautiful things but she's utterly miserable since she is captive to vile, greedy individuals.]]
* ItsAllAboutMe: All the children's parents and guardians are self-centred and neglectful. For all of them it took no less than a week to notice their children have disappeared. Also during the investigations they release interviews to earn some money out of their tragedy.

* KrakenAndLeviathan: The giant kraken puts in an appearance. [[spoiler:There's a little one, too; it likes cookies and is quite adorable.]]

* ShapeshiftingLover: When someone attacks the abovementioned seal, this trope ensues for the aunt who was friends with his seal-form.