5/5 stars. Crying and in need of emotional support after this.

I surprisingly won this book in a Goodreads giveaway and just finished reading the ARC. Ironically, out of all of the books I read this year, this may have been my favorite read. The connections, the love, the trauma, the hope, the despair. I am ugly crying. I didn't expect to fall so in love with this book.

I couldn't put this book down. I read it from start to finish in one sitting (only with bathroom breaks). The writing was beautiful, the story was beautiful, the message was beautiful.

There is a part with some whales that is incredibly heartbreaking, for those of you that would want to know whether they live or die,

they end up living. It's a heart-wrenching scene, but when you make it through, you'll be relieved and joyful.

I loved seeing the connections form between these characters and to see how they broke and forged together. I'm not sure that I really have anything bad to say about this story.

I was at first apprehensive about the multiple POVs but it was so well-done that it wasn’t an issue at all. It actually offered more for the story than had it been one POV. 

This was a story of one woman washing up on shore in search of her husband only to be saved by a teenage girl. It then follows her search for her husband while expanding on the lives of this family and their connections severed and created. We learn the dark truths of this island and the haunting past that shaped this family.

It is a mystery as well as a story about love, loss and healing. 




TW: animal cruelty/death (mentions), drowning, death, parent death, grief, pregnancy, suicide, cancer, child death, adult/minor relationship