Laura Silverman
release date: May 2, 2017 by Sourcebooks Fire
goodreads/b&n/amazon
Anise Sawyer plans to spend every minute of summer with her friends: surfing, chowing down on fish tacos drizzled with wasabi balsamic vinegar, and throwing bonfires that blaze until dawn. But when a serious car wreck leaves her aunt, a single mother of three, with two broken legs, it forces Anise to say goodbye for the first time to Santa Cruz, the waves, her friends, and even a kindling romance, and fly with her dad to Nebraska for the entire summer. Living in Nebraska isn’t easy. Anise spends her days caring for her three younger cousins in the childhood home of her runaway mom, a wild figure who’s been flickering in and out of her life since birth, appearing for weeks at a time and then disappearing again for months, or even years, without a word.
Complicating matters is Lincoln, a one-armed, charismatic skater who pushes Anise to trade her surfboard for a skateboard. As Anise draws closer to Lincoln and takes on the full burden and joy of her cousins, she loses touch with her friends back home – leading her to one terrifying question: will she turn out just like her mom and spend her life leaving behind the ones she loves
full review under the cut!
Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for allowing me to sneak an early peek at this one on Netgalley! I have been looking forward to this book for forever, and it did not disappoint! I absolutely think that everyone should be throwing this book in their beach bags this summer, because it is a perfect thing to read as you're getting a tan or basking in an ocean breeze. Reading this book by the water is what our protag Anise would want! Basically this book has everything: solid and amazing friendships, families that are mixed up and wonderful and difficult and amazing all at once, absoltuely adorable romance, surfing, skateboarding, food, and ~finding yourself~. I loved it all, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a summer read that will hold your attention!
This book revolves around Anise, who is a surfer girl TO THE CORE, who loves her California home of Santa Cruz and never wants to leave it, and who has an amazing group of friends who are perfectly content to hang out on and around the beach, all day everyday. She has a great relationship with her single dad, but a more complicated one with her absent mother. Anise is looking forward to a summer full of surfing and bonding with her friends before some of them leave for college, but that all changes when her Aunt, her mother's sister, is in a horrible accident, leaving it to Anise and her dad to fly to Nebraska and take care of her three young children. Anise is devastated and angry at the loss of her summer plans, but she soon comes to find out that she can find joy in the flat Nebraska heat, and that change isn't always a bad thing.
I thought Anise was a great main character. Her motivations are pretty simple at first: SURF ALL DAY LONG, eat, talk to her friends. She is someone who is very comfortable in her life and routine, and doesn't like going outside of it at all. I really liked it, though, when she got pushed out of her comfort zone. I totally understood her anger over having her summer taken away from her, but I was also like... come on!!! You gotta help your family! But as we find out more about Anise's experience with family and with people leaving, you totally understand where she's coming from. I liked that she wasn't just being selfish, she had a legitimate worry that she would turn out like her mother, and that played out in a great way throughout the book. I also loved Anise's relationships with her little cousins. I loved the way they started out kind of wary around each other and then by the end they were all like her little siblings.
Also: the romance!! SO GREAT. Lincoln is so freaking charming and adorable, I loved him so much from the very first time he popped up. I love that he keeps on pushing Anise to go outside her comfort zone, no matter how much she resists at first. I was a little bit annoyed that Anise didn't get any closure with Eric, and just let him hang over the entire summer, but the cuteness with Lincoln more than made up for it. The cutest parts were when they had their roadtrips together, and how Anise felt herself becoming totally comfortable with Lincoln as they kept on driving together. I also love how his taunting made her learn how to skateboard, which was really the turning point for her summer! I think they're so great together, because they're both really competitive and will keep on pushing each other.
I think that Laura Silverman did a great job with all of the relationships in this book. Anise and her dad were great, I definitely felt their shared history and how at ease they were with each other. I loved the trust that existed between them. The relationships between Anise and her dad and then her aunt and the cousins was also really cute, because her dad definitely didn't have to keep up with her aunt, but he did! Then Anise and Emery and the boys, Anise and Linclon, Lincoln and his little brother, Anise and her friends, Anise and her mom. They were all really well done and felt super real to me. I liked that we got to see a richness and a depth in a lot of these relationships, and even when it was difficult, like with Anise's mom, it still showed us something about her character.
I also really felt like I learned a lot about surfing and skateboarding, and I loved how Anise was a competitive athlete through and through, without making her out to be a super cliche tomboy or whatever. I loved that!
Anyways, this book is super great and exciting and cute, and I loved it so much <3 p="">
xx
Caroline
No comments:
Post a Comment