Afar by Megan Freeman

River, a budding eleven-year-old nature artist, gains a new viewpoint in life when his estranged cousin, Emma, and her mother come to his off-the-grid mountain compound to escape from a problematic home situation. Through Emma, River learns more about what has been happening in the area outside of their rural outpost (and what his brother, Mustang, has been up to) and starts to question the rules and restrictions that the group has imposed upon the community.

At the same time, Emma’s prevailing sense of dread about her stepfather leads her to cultivate her self-defense skills. With mass evacuations and panic outside the compound and questions stirring within, the cousins must lean on each other to weather the upheaval.

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PRE-READING

Alone and Away showed us different sides of a world in crisis. Afar takes us somewhere rather different: an off-the-grid mountain compound, where a young boy who has grown up with one set of rules is about to discover that the world beyond them might be very different from what he has been told.

Of the three books, this is the one where I most appreciated having read the others first. The background isn't explained as fully here, so knowing the wider story helped me settle into the setting and understand what was happening beyond the immediate events.

POST-READING

River is an eleven-year-old nature artist living in a remote mountain community. When his cousin Emma and her mother arrive, escaping Emma's abusive stepfather, River starts to see his home and its rules in a new light. Meanwhile, Emma is determined to learn how to defend herself, and the two cousins have to navigate both the upheaval outside their community and the questions beginning to stir within it.

One thing I particularly liked was the way the compound is portrayed. It has a strong leader and rules that deserve scrutiny, but it isn't automatically presented as a cult. People can leave without being hunted down, even if their absence is felt by those who remain. That makes an interesting contrast with Emma's stepfather, whose attempts to control her are far more overtly abusive. The book allows us to recognise that a community can have problems without every person in it being a villain.

I was especially pleased by the way the boys in the community help Emma learn self-defence. There's no fuss about the fact that she's a girl, no insistence that the men will protect her instead. They simply help her learn a useful skill. It's a small but important detail, and one that fits the book's broader interest in questioning assumptions and deciding which rules actually serve a purpose.

Although Afar connects to the other books in the series — Emma has been mentioned before, and Mustang's story continues to have a role — its main narrative feels quite separate. I could easily imagine this working as a standalone story, even if readers who've already read Alone and Away will have a fuller understanding of the wider situation.

This is a story about survival, but also about the assumptions we inherit, the rules we accept without question, and what happens when someone else's experiences show us a different way of looking at the world. River's changing perspective gives the story its heart, while Emma's determination to take responsibility for her own safety provides a strong counterpoint.

Of the three books, this is the one where I most wanted the surrounding context to be clearer. But I enjoyed the story, particularly its refusal to make every situation neatly black and white. Sometimes the important thing isn't whether a community is good or bad, but whether the people within it are willing to question what they're doing and make room for change.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Book: The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill — for young readers who enjoy stories about isolated communities, inherited beliefs and discovering that the world is more complicated than they've been led to believe.

TV: Hilda — for young adventurers who love the natural world, question the rules and discover that understanding people who live differently from you can change how you see everything.

MUSIC PAIRING

“The Hanging Tree” — from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.

A song about secrecy, resistance and people deciding what they're willing to risk for one another. It suits the atmosphere of a community where not everyone agrees with the rules, and where sometimes doing the right thing means quietly finding another way.

VIBE CHECK

• Colour palette: Fern green, moss, bark brown and the soft gold of spring sunshine filtering through the trees.

• Soundtrack: Wind in the branches, birdsong, distant footsteps on a forest path and the quiet rustle of someone moving where they aren't quite supposed to be.

• Season: Spring, when everything is growing and the possibilities ahead seem almost endless.

• Mood: Watchful, thoughtful and quietly hopeful, with an undercurrent of tension.

• Scent: Damp earth, pine needles, crushed leaves and fresh rain.

• Texture: Rough tree bark, soft moss, cool stones and the papery edges of a sketchbook.

TAROT CARD PULLED — SEVEN OF SWORDS

The Seven of Swords is the card of strategy, secrecy and finding a way around an obstacle. Sometimes it represents deception; sometimes it asks us to consider whether the rules we're breaking deserve our obedience in the first place.

In Afar, characters have to decide what to question, what to keep to themselves and when quiet action might be more useful than open confrontation. There's a certain amount of sneaking around in the name of a good cause — and a reminder that following the rules isn't always the same as doing the right thing.

Afar publishes on 25 March 2027. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.