Ratings1
Average rating4
4.5 stars.
The book is strongly Christian because of the heroine's outspoken faith. It's an enjoyable story, with danger mainly from an enormous cuttlefish (octopus) and a tribe of Dyaks. I did find it a bit of a stretch that so many supplies were easily found to hand (I too would have been content to be marooned with a chest of tea and a box of new books...as well as an able-bodied gentleman with a secret past) but, it definitely helped out our poor characters!
Interesting note about the edition I have: other than this book, first printed twenty years before and considered a classic at that point, only one other book on the series list for this edition (Aldrich's “Story of a Bad Boy”) did not survive to become a household name today. The rest—Heidi, Robinson Crusoe, Black Beauty, An Old-Fashioned Girl, etc, are all well known still. Such old lists of classics always fascinate me; out of the twenty-six, only two were mostly forgotten.