Twelve-year-old Tuva has always felt different from her classmates. In the past, they’ve bullied her; now, “at best, they ignore” her. But until a classmate goes missing during an orienteering test, along with other people from the Stockholm archipelago where she lives, she has no idea why she doesn’t fit in nor how different she truly is. For although she has forgotten how, at some point in her life she was able to breathe underwater.

With newcomer Rasmus, who becomes her friend, she feels compelled to solve the mystery of her classmate’s disappearance. Is the school counselor involved? Is she, somehow? As the mysteries compound, she uncovers more and more about the paranormal truths shrouded in the islands’ misty past, her own unexpected origins, and her importance for the archipelago’s future.  

A darkly atmospheric page turner for upper middle grade/young YA readers, The Secrets Below is a well-balanced combination of origin story, fairy tale, eco-narrative, and supernatural thriller. It’s also exceedingly hard to put down: although I’m not normally a fan of thrillers, I read it in one large gulp. While the story will undoubtedly be too scary for those sensitive younger teens who fear the many things that can go bump in the night, The Secrets Below will give intrepid readers delightful chills as they watch Tuva come into her own.

The Secrets Below is the first entry in the Whispering Sea Mysteries, with the second volume, Beneath the Mists, coming out in September.

I can’t wait…

The Secrets Below
Written by Camille and Viveca Sten
Translated from the Swedish by A.A. Prime
ISBN: 978-1662529870
Feb. 1, 2026, Amazon Crossing Kids

Review: Kirkus, Publishers Weekly

You can buy a copy here* or find a copy of it at a library.

*Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission at no cost to you.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 140 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Up in the Blue Sky: Journey from the Earth’s Surface to Outer Space (2025 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection), Ellie in First Position (2024 ALA Top Ten Graphic Novels for Children; Texas Library Association’s Little Maverick graphic novel reading list), Magical History Tour: Vikings and Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).