Review by Ian Keogh

Alex has happy childhood memories of small British seaside town Indigo Harbour, of the days spent there looked after by her grandmother. As she became older, though, the gaps between visits grew to the point where they were intended, but never happened, and even the phone calls became shorter. Now Sophia has died, and Alex’s visit to Indigo Harbour is to clear out her home.

Indigo Harbour is well presented by Bex Glendining as a mysterious town with pleasant, but somehow different inhabitants. There’s a serenity to both the place and the narrative as Alex and her friend Grim go around talking to people and discovering how much more there was to Sophia than Alex knew, while learning about the town as well.

Glendining’s decidedly British version of mystical realism in mundane surroundings is thoughtfully applied to the point actual fantasy elements manifest, and a soft touch is provided to Alex’s feelings of loss and grieving. An aspect well handled is that the loss comes with a side dish of guilt for Alex, yet Sophia’s friends understand how the young lead their lives and have little animosity about her lack of contact with her grandmother. While Alex transmits as rounded and sympathetic, her friend Grim is pretty much a blank slate, a narrative necessity as a sounding board, but never developed as anything more.

Attractive digital art characterises both people and places, switching assuredly between reality and something more, with attention paid to colour. It’s very rarely a full palette is applied, restricted to remarkable moments.

These are deliberately few and far between, in a slow release drama of perceptions challenged and coming to terms with what’s happened. The epilogue is surplus to requirement, but On Starlit Shores is otherwise a sensitively observed drama hitting all the right emotional beats.