An Amazing Debut

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The book tells you, in all caps, before you start reading PLEASE BE AWARE THIS BOOK CONTAINS INSTANCES OF SUICIDAL IDEATION AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, AS WELL AS DETAILED DEPICITION OF DEPRESSION.

This book is a beautifully written debut novel of Cassandra Hartt.

It feels more of character driven book than a plot driven book, with three POV's of three teenagers, Harlow, Ellis and Tommy. Harlow and Ellis are bestfriends , Ellis and Tommy are estranged twin brothers.

Harlow is focusing on saving the town. Ellis with a partly amputated leg, is focusing on running track, getting a scholarship for a college and get out of there. Even though it will break "The Plan" he and Harlow have. Tommy is just done with everything and shows it in the beginning by swimming after the storm with no intentions of returning.

Knowing the book is a YA involving teens, age 16, as the main characters I was expecting to be reading about your ordinary everyday teens going through their hormonal stages of life. So I didn't mind these complex characters that are kind of unlikeable.

Their town, West Finch, Maine, is eroding away storm after storm but this past storm was pretty rough on it. Harlow wants to save this town however protestors are more interested and concerned for protecting birds that have decided to nest on the rock jetty that has created worse issues with the erosions and will be taking the town away sooner. Harlow wants to fix it.

Ellis is seriously into running and focusing more on it and himself. He didn't seem to mind, or care, when he saw Tommy go out for that swim, instead he and Harlow walk away. However, Harlow does hesitate and keeps watching him. When his mom asks Ellis why he has Goose, Tommy's dog, and where's Tommy Ellis just keeps quiet. Harlow does speak up with the answers and his mom is quite upset them. So with Ellis being more focused on himself and not much on his brother or their town, Harlow wants to fix that.

Tommy only seems to care about Goose, his loyal dog. He feels he's a failure at everything. He feels he's lost his twin brother, his love, apssion, and the value of his artwork, his friends, everything! Harlow wants to fix that too, even though those two have never gotten along and do not like each other. That turns into a secretive, complicated, and confusing relationship that does makes him, and us readers, to wonder if it's even real or not.

As you can see Harlow is trying to fix everybody elses problems except her own. And she definitely has some that she really needs to focus on fix.

I'm not not quite sure what to think about the ending of the book, it just seems to just stop, leaving it empty. Are we suppose to mentally write our own ending? Is there a possible second book coming to carry on with the future of characters? Are we suppose to take it as it seems to be?

With all that, I truly did enjoy the book overall and I want to highly thank Roaring Book Press and Bookish First for a finished copy of the book for my honest review.