Disclaimer: This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on The Locket’s Secret. The Catholic Company is the best resource for all your seasonal needs such as First Communion gifts as well as ideas and gifts for the special papal Year of Faith.

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What happens when you’re young and settled in your life, and then all of a sudden, everything goes topsy-turvy … your life is not the same anymore … you’re in a different place … with different people … with a different life. How do you cope, especially if you’re a teen-ager?

These are the questions homeschool author K. Kelley Heyne answers in her middle-grade novel, The Locket’s Secret. Heyne’s protagonist, 13-year-old Carrie Adams is moved from her home in Bremerton (Washington) to Green Bay (Wisconsin) … away from all that she knows and loves. How will she bear up on the interminable van-ride across many states … how can she ever find the joy she knew …

Carrie retreats into an imaginary world, a world where she is Princess Caritas. Caritas is the only one who can save her kingdom, her brothers and her family from all the bad.

Where the two stories merge in this book is with the locket — a locket that holds Carrie’s most precious love, her little sister Cecilia.

While this book is an interesting story, I think the author is trying just a tad too hard to get the message across that Carrie has to face her grief, accept it, and move on. Her parents are trying to let Carrie work it out herself — and in the process, almost lose her. Having been a parent that has to make the decision to move to the unknown rather than stay with the known and comfortable, I just thought Carrie’s parents were too laid back about letting her daughter find the answer on her own; she’s only 13. But the outcome is a good and healthy one (that is pretty realistic) … so, Heyne’s story works.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has a young teen facing grief and separation and all the troubles those emotions bring. It’s a very Catholic book and would be a great talking-points book for grief-counseling with young ones.