When Primrose’s parents are lost at sea, the only thing she knows for certain is that they can’t be dead. Everyone else in Coal Harbour believes she’s not quite alright in the head after their accident, and being danger-prone doesn’t help matters. Making friends with a stubborn short-order cook, helping her ambitious Uncle Jack turn her sleepy hometown into a tourist attraction, and dodging the opinionated Miss Honeycut’s attempts to put her in foster care are just the start of Primrose’s adventures as she waits for her parents to reappear.

She made about a million waffles while I sat there. She had to make about a million every day because at The Girl on the Red Swing they served everything on a waffle. Not just the kind of food that went with waffles—not just ham and eggs on a waffle or strawberries on a waffle. No, at The Girl on the Red Swing if you ordered a steak it came on a waffle, if you ordered fish and chips it came on a waffle, if you ordered waffles they came on a waffle.

Everything on a Waffle is equal parts drama and comedy. Primrose’s controversial belief that her parents will return isolates her, but reveals little truths about life, the people around her, and the nature of joy. In true Classic form, this begins on the slow side, but surprising incidents and dramatic surprises begin to kick in around the second half. Don’t be fooled into thinking this will be a quiet slice-of-life orphan story, because a flaming class pet isn’t the worst of Primrose’s accidents by the end of the book.

I got the feeling that Miss Honeycut didn’t even know what issues she was talking about—that she just liked using the word “issues” and would use it whenever she could slip it into conversation. Certain people do get attached to certain words this way. I kind of liked “solarium” myself although it did not lend itself to such easy usage.

I might recommend this to fans of Sarah Weeks or Rebecca Stead with a light warning about the weird pacing of Classics and that the heroine may not be entirely in one piece by the end.

⬢ ⬢ ⬢  THREE STARS
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