We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Break Wide the Sea by Sara Holland, a young adult novel publishing with Wednesday Books on November 11.

In the treacherous waters surrounding Kirkrell, sailors hunting magic whales live in fear of the finfolk—bloodthirsty sea fae who sink ships and curse bloodlines. Nineteen-year-old Annie, as heir to the city’s preeminent whaling company, is determined to carry on her parents’ life’s work. But she keeps a secret from everyone: she’s cursed to transform into a monster, with scales spreading up her arms and claws growing from her fingertips.

Her fiancé August offers comfort, but their love falls apart when Annie discovers his plan to take over the company. Desperate, Annie makes a deal with Silas Price, a young captain rumored to be half-finfolk. He says he knows how to break the curse—but only if Annie promises to stop the practice of whaling forever.

As Annie, August and Silas sail north, Annie wrestling with her family’s legacy, the threat of the finfolk and August’s ambitions increasingly force her to put her trust in Silas. Yet Silas has secrets of his own, and they might be the most dangerous of all.

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**Chapter **I

*Girls on the shore must guard their hearts * For the men tend to die catching whales. *Yet nothing we do for all our arts * Will keep them from their sails.

—Abbonish nursery rhyme, recorded in Kirkrell in third month, seventeen hundred and fifty-three years FC

The box from the dressmaker arrives just in time.

After our housekeeper carries it to my room, I kneel and sort through the contents, careful not to let my fingernails—long, sharp, reddish-black—snag the expensive fab­rics. Gloves, two dozen new pairs in linen and leather, velvet and silk, of various muted colors. A gray silk pair, I think, for tonight.

I’m tugging them gingerly on, a set of movements perfected by years of practice, when a bright voice from the doorway makes me jump.

“Is that a new dress?” Lydia asks.

Glancing over my shoulder, I see my younger sister teetering in the doorway, craning to get a glimpse inside the box. Heart in my throat, I lean over it to block her view of my hands as I finish pulling the gloves on. “No,” I say, letting the lid fall shut and sit­ting on its edge to face her. “Just some new petticoats.”

She knows that I always wear gloves, but not why. And I don’t want her to see the new shipment and ask again. I have enough lies to keep straight tonight.

“Oh,” Lydia says, disappointed. She’s ready for the sharehold­ers’ meeting in a dress the pale yellow of corn silk, her hair drawn up and her cheeks pink with excitement, or maybe rouge. “You’re wearing that old thing?”

I look down, chagrined. I’m wearing a dress from a few years ago—dark blue velvet, the color of the ocean late in the evening on certain summer nights, when the sky has faded to twilight. It falls almost to the floor, skimming my body, with long sleeves and a high neck. I chose it carefully, hoping to make the sharehold­ers see me as more than an incompetent child, as someone to be reckoned with. “This isn’t a walk on the promenade, Lydia. It’s a business meeting.”

Double-checking that the gloves haven’t snagged, I move to my bedside vanity to fix the last few buttons at my nape, the tricky ones. Maker knows I’ve had enough practice at this over the years, but with Lydia watching it’s harder. “Our appearances are only important insofar as they inspire the shareholders to have confidence in us,” I tell her reflection in the mirror.

Although I fear that inspiring confidence in the shareholders will be an impossible task. Lately nothing I do seems to impress them. Perhaps short of magically transforming into my dead father, nothing ever will.

“Did you get Kit to bed?” I ask. In the mirror, I see Lydia drift into the room, despite how often I’ve told her to stay out unless invited.

“Yes, though I suspect he’ll be up for a while.” She pauses to examine the contents of my open wardrobe. “I told him he could read for half an hour since we ‘re making him miss the party, so I give it two hours before he’s asleep.”

“It’s not a party,” I say, pointlessly, because she’s not listening. She’s radiant, as always, but I can read the nervousness in her pale, set face, how she glances in the mirror and tugs at one lock of carefully curled hair.

*Should teach her how to hide that, *I think, soon, before—

“This is pretty.” She reaches for the seashell on top of my writing desk, a peach-and-white conch shell nested in a black silk handkerchief.

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Break Wide the Sea

Sara Holland

I whirl around, almost tearing one of the buttons from my dress in my haste to fling a hand out and block her path. “Don’t touch that!”

She steps back, raising her palms in a conciliatory gesture. “All right, I won’t.” Her brown eyes are wide, alarmed.

I take a deep breath and step back, aware that I moved too quickly. “I’m sorry.” I opt for a partial truth in hopes that she’ll buy it. ‘Tm just nervous for tonight. The shell is from August and I suppose-I suppose I’m rather protective of it.” As I speak, I wrap the shell in the handkerchief—the spines sharp even through two layers of silk—and place it carefully in the top drawer of my dresser.

When I look back up, my little sister is watching me, quiet, considering. “If you say so,” she says eventually. “Do you want me to do up your buttons in the back?”

“Please.” I turn around so my back is to her and move my dark blonde braid over the front of my shoulder, eyes down so as not to meet my own gaze in the mirror. Lydia comes up behind me, lifting her hands. I will myself to be calm, to act like I have nothing to hide.

Because why should I be afraid? Her fingers are soft and warm and nimble, fixing the lace at the nape of my neck, where my skin is still smooth. Her smile in the mirror is sweet, placid. If she feels my pulse thudding under my skin, she says nothing.

There have been times, these past few years, when I’ve caught her looking at me strangely, or for too long. Times when she asked if I was all right, and when I said I was, she held my gaze like she was trying to catch me out in a lie. But those moments grew fewer and farther between, and now she never asks at all. Our conver­sations center around frivolous things, everyday matters. News from the docks, gossip from the neighbors.

I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve gotten better at lying—at hiding—or if she’s simply given up on hearing the truth from me.

My fingers itch in their gloves. I grip the corner of the vanity and try not to think about it.

From Break Wide the Sea by Sara Holland. Copyright © 2025 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.