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Aria’s friendship with Calliope and Flitter gives this story its emotional depth. Their experiences expose the machinery beneath Hollywood’s dream factory, where beauty is treated as currency and a young woman’s career can depend upon how much of herself she's prepared, or pressured to surrender. Bob Ashenhurst, the self-appointed King of Hollywood, is the clearest face of that corruption. His power rests upon more than his own behaviour.

As winter deepens and the fishermen return with empty nets, fear begins to consume the isolated community. Selkies, strangers and women who refuse to behave as they should all become convenient objects of suspicion. Malie has to contend not only with the mystery of her mother’s disappearance but with an increasingly dangerous husband and a society structured to protect his authority rather than her safety.

Anthea Hodgson’s The Palace of Lost Virtue begins with one woman believing she's been called to save another.

One of the easiest mistakes we make is assuming history changed because somebody signed a law or delivered a famous speech. It rarely happens that neatly. More often, it changes because ordinary people begin asking questions they weren't supposed to ask.