Even when Dean’s basketball stardom leads to a full athletic scholarship to a university on the mainland, and Kaui’s intelligence and ambition lands her in San Diego, studying engineering and excelling in her classes, they are never able to measure up to their brother.Īs the story develops, the three siblings each suffer tremendously. Dean, Noa’s older brother and the Flores family’s eldest child, and Kaui, Noa’s sister and the youngest child, feel as though they are doomed to live in Noa’s shadow. However, one of the many ways in which Washburn shatters the traditional trajectory of the Chosen One archetype is by lovingly exploring the toll that such high expectations of greatness could take on the Chosen One, as well as those closest to them. In the wake of this miracle, Noa begins developing gifts no one can explain, which only confirms his parents’ and community’s suspicions: he has been favored by the ancient Hawaiian gods. Nainoa (Noa) Flores, the Chosen One in question, is the middle child we learn that on a family vacation in 1995, Noa fell overboard a cruise ship into the middle of the ocean and was rescued by a shark. SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORS, Washburn’s debut novel, follows a Filipino-Hawaiian family with a Chosen One at its center. I felt much less obligated to write a review for this book than I felt compelled to I’m just bursting to share all my favorite things about it and all the ways in which it’s remarkable. Its premise, one that draws from Hawaiian mythology and folklore, is irresistible, Washburn’s writing is dazzling, and the story follows some of the most complex and richly developed characters I’ve ever read. This book is one of the best I’ve ever read, and it is criminally underrated. CRIMINALLY underrated,” and I stand by this statement. My Goodreads review for SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORS begins, “this is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read holy ****. “When our language,‘Ōlelo Hawai’i, was outlawed, so our gods went, so our prayers went, so ideas went, so the island went.”

Shark in the time of saviors