What if it was Ellie who went UP to Paradise Falls?

Sixteen-year-old Ellie McGill is fed up. Sure, for some, life in small town Americana is idyllic. Nothing but picket fences and USO dances and holiday parades. But Ellie has long dreamed of towering mountains, tangled jungles, and most of all…traveling to the incredible South American landmark, Paradise Falls.

Ellie thought these dreams made her strange, until she met her sweet best friend Carl (when he promptly broke his leg in her clubhouse). Carl is Ellie’s closest confidante. He’s also the only one able to talk her off a ledge. But things between them seem weird lately as Ellie grows increasingly frustrated with his quiet way of doing things. And is it just her, or are there new feelings bubbling up between them?

Then Ellie begins her dream internship at the local zoo, where the flashy millionaire owner organizes an expedition to Paradise Falls to collect new specimens. But the star newcomer, a bird given to him by Charles Muntz himself, doesn’t adjust well to his new home and Ellie is put in charge of its seemingly hopeless recovery. Carl advises Ellie to lay low, to not make waves. But that’s not something Ellie has ever been good at. And when an opportunity comes for a last minute, emergency rescue mission, she decides to take it.

Will Ellie’s impulsiveness finally get the better of her? Or will she get the adventure she always wanted . . . and at what cost?

This was a delightful novel exploring who Ellie (and Carl) were like as teenagers and future adventurers. While we get a good idea of who Ellie was in the movie before her tragic death, kind, adventurous, Carl’s more bold true love, we don’t get to know much beyond that.

Here we get great insight to Ellie’s flaws and foibles, dissecting her love for adventure.

Firstly, Braswell has always been good at immersing readers into the broader description of her worlds as well as the minutia of the landscape. You can see the small-town USA of Bloomington with its one road, generations of factory workers, and 40s era gender roles and patriotism. It made it feel like the most realistic of the Twisted Tales novels. More historical fiction than a Disney AU as Braswell touches on the time period’s politics with women having to leave the workforce when the men come back from war, and Ellie reckoning with how unfair it is, and what that might mean for her future.

Which brings us to Ellie. She’s very much living in the present. She doesn’t think things through when she gets ideas in her head, and that makes it hard for her to picture her future. Much less plan it. She always seen the future as something that just as happens, but the events of the book demonstrate that adventure and her future is a choice. Not a series of circumstances and conditions out of her control.

This nicely ties into Ellie’s primary journey about choices. She’s a nice girl, trying to do the right thing by others, but doesn’t always choose the wisest course of action. As her zoo mentor, Margaret Kline teaches her, there are multiple solutions to a problem. She needs to think them through and find the best one.

However, it takes awhile for this wise advice to sink in, thus necessitating the two-parter this book is.

First part is entitled Grounded, featuring the primarily historical fiction atmosphere I was talking about. It’s not slow-paced, but readers will certainly feel like they are bystander in the small-town, watching the happenings and being part of the changing America. You understand their references are limited to black and white newsreels and comics at the malt shop. Feel the excitement of the soldiers coming home, and Ellie’s passion for working at the zoo. Since Braswell mentions in her author’s note that her son is a zookeeper, she imparts lots of real life education into the novel about conservation, the scientific method of caring for rare creatures in unfamiliar habitats, preservation and animal health.

We also get to see the unfolding of Carl and Ellie’s romance, and it is so, so wholesome. They are best friends, fellow explorers and Charles Muntz fans, these new feelings leave them uncertain. Especially for Ellie as this pushes her to start thinking about what she wants in the future, can she have a career and a husband instead of being a homemaker like her mother with 8 kids? Carl will likely support her, but how can she know if he likes her as more than a best friend if he never speaks his mind?!

Frustrating yet relatable and highlights their almost opposites attract. . . . no, opposites complement relationship. She is bold, while he is cautious. She inspires her to be more, he inspires her to think beyond the next moment. Plus Carl is just so endearingly sweet with his love for ham radios, and balloons and his steady confidence without having to be all macho. I love them together.

Ellie’s family doesn’t get much to do, honestly they are part of why she wants to adventure out of her small town. I mean, the clustraphobia of ten people in one house, no wonder she wants wide-open spaces. But it is the catalyst for her to start working at the zoo, for money and for the time for herself to do what she loves. She meets the inspiring figure of Margaret Kline who represents the 40s working woman, at once incredibly aspirational yet Braswell peels back the layers to expose all the hard work it takes to get there and the sexism that she’s have to overcome.

The setting also introduces Leroy the 3rd, Bloomington’s rich boy whose parents gifted him the zoo so he’d have a job and ugh, he’s the worst. He’s a rich privileged man of the 40s who was stationed on the Alps, so he never fought Nazis, but pretends he was a big soldier. While it’s obvious that the zoo veterans don’t like how he’s running the zoo like a spectacle (to garner more patrons he says. More like to boost his personal reputation), but Ellie only sees the flash at first. She’s not so much envious, but wishes she could be like him as she recognizes his family wealth is what allows him to have planes, and cars, and funds to go on adventures like she wants to.

Truthfully, Ellie is more into the spectacle of adventuring and is initially bored by the dreary work of studying new fauna, map-making and scientific research that fuels knowledge rather than glory. However Part 2, UP changes all that.

Some spoilers below

This is where it shifts from historical fiction to adventure when Ellie steals a plane, so she can return Soda Pop the bird back to his natural habitat before he dies. Things stay fairly realistic here too as Ellie gets scraped and injured most of the time, and needs a lot of help from the locals in order to save the day. She meets two other explorers as well as the dashing, psuedo-revolutionary Jean who provides a mirror to Ellie’s worst traits.

At first she’s attracted by Jean’s move star looks, his knowledge of wildlife skills, other languages and being so cool and wordly compared to her small-town life. But he is equally brash and impulsive, and she finally sees what everyone else has been warning her about reckless decision-making. He also highlights that while these boastful men are fun to look at, he is a product of his time in which his sensitive ego can’t stand being corrected by a girl. Something Carl never did.

Leroy makes his appearance too as Ellie’s Muntz. While she never admired him to the levels Carl does with Charles Muntz, he is just as terrifying from his transformation to harmless, selfish rich boy to unhinged man that can’t take anyone not giving him what he wants or ruining the reputation he thinks he deserves. It’s almost like an incel before incel existed. His rich companion, debutante Diana, is no better as she treats killing like a game. As Ellie muses the rich act like laws don’t apply to them, especially when the cameras are gone and they are not in their own country.

Also love how the ending was very 40s serial with famous historical figure coming in at last minute to save the day (with the help of Magaret and Carl) and allow Ellie a day of experiencing luxury for the first time. So timely.

No matter, it makes for a thrilling, high-flying adventure in the rainbow fauna of Paradise Falls where Ellie really begins to mature and comes to the heart-warming realization that adventure is not as fun without the one you’d want to adventure with.

One of the most realistic and relatable Twisted Tales giving a voice to a beloved character with heart and love for the unknown, the nature and animals at home, and finding the future for yourself and with someone else.

5 stars