Ivy Tran has been cranky ever since her parents shuttered their little gallery in San Diego and shipped her to Rust Harbor to live with her rule-keeping Aunt Leda above the Gallows Frame shop. Ivy is wild for mark-making—she names her pens, tells stories in paint swatches, and is absolutely obsessed with shadows that look like they might be alive. In Rust Harbor, talented kids sometimes receive a mirrored tin brush from the Moonwell Inkworks and become Binders, partnered to a living sketch. Ivy has been waiting forever; no brush has ever arrived.
While wandering the fog-cloaked rail yard at Old Ferris Slip, Ivy discovers a peeling, century-old mural hidden behind a fallen billboard. The mural's black line unspools and curls into a shy, inky creature who calls himself Umbro. He's strange—he has no Binder. Worse, his strokes keep breaking apart, like dried riverbeds. Determined to help, Ivy secretly sketches with Umbro in the derelict depot, only to learn that Rust Harbor's supply of lampblack has soured and the last working tin brush sits locked in Mr. Bartholomew Pike's glass case on Winthrop Avenue.
To save Umbro, Ivy and her cautious neighbor Dom Raines race across town to gather cobalt soot from Carpenter's Bridge, barter for a silver nib at the midnight market under Dante Street, and unearth the truth about the muralist who vanished a hundred years ago. Along the way, Ivy discovers that her link to shadows isn't like a Binder's at all—she can coax life from negative space and stitch broken lines with silence. But when Aunt Leda learns the depot secret and the city moves to whitewash the wall, Ivy must risk her place in her new home to prove that Umbro—and her messy, impossible art—deserve to stay.
This luminous, ink-splashed story of friendship, family, and finding your line will resonate with readers who love Lightfall, The Witch Boy, and Aquicorn Cove.
If Lightfall's soft glow met The Witch Boy's tender self-acceptance, you'd get this harbor-soaked quest about art and responsibility; the Ivy–Umbro bond is delicate, funny, and quietly brave.
This is a story about authorship and belonging, with art as both shelter and signal. Ivy's ability to coax life from negative space turns "finding your line" into a literal ethic: speak, but also listen; draw, but also leave room. The tension between preservation and whitewash reads as a gentle civics lesson about who gets to keep a city's memory, and the family thread with Aunt Leda brings the theme home without getting preachy.
Loved the premise, mixed on momentum.
Ivy is prickly and bright, the kind of kid who names pens and argues with her own brush strokes, and Umbro's shy, cracked lines make him instantly endearing. Dom's careful sensibility balances Ivy's impulse, and Aunt Leda reads as a rule-keeper whose rules were built to protect, not control. Dialogue is quick without snark, and the friendship between girl and shadow feels mutual, not instrumental.
Worldbuilding gold. The mirrored tin brushes from Moonwell Inkworks, Binders paired to living sketches, and the way soured lampblack becomes a citywide problem all feel like practical folklore. Details sing, from cobalt soot under Carpenter's Bridge to a silver nib bartered in the midnight market below Dante Street, to Mr. Pike's guarded glass case. The rules are intuitive, the stakes are civic and personal, and the fog-slick rail yard mural is a portal that never needs magic portals to feel magical.
A smartly designed comic about making marks and making do. The layouts breathe, using quiet gutters and fog-soft panels to let Rust Harbor creep in, while Ivy's running commentary and the trembly balloon style for Umbro keep the page alive. A couple of market sequences get visually busy, but the book keeps returning to clean negative space that reflects the story's heart: mending what's broken with silence as much as ink.
