Information:

• Girl Out of Water by Laura Silverman
• format: eARC
• source: netgalley
• pages: 320
• genre: contemporary
• amazon
• goodreads
• stars: 5/5

Goodreads Summary:

Ocean breeze in her hair and sand between her toes, Anise can’t wait to spend the summer before her senior year surfing and hanging out on the beach with friends. Santa Cruz is more than her home-it’s her heart. But when her aunt, a single mother, is in a serious car accident, Anise must say goodbye to California to help care for her three young cousins.

Landlocked Nebraska is the last place Anise wants to be. Sure, she loves her family, but it’s hard to put her past behind her when she’s living in the childhood house of the mother who abandoned her. And with every Instagram post, her friends back home feel further away.

Then she meets Lincoln, a charismatic, one-armed skater who challenges her to swap her surfboard for a skateboard. Because sometimes the only way to find your footing is to let go.

Review:

I was pretty bored at first, but I continued because I heard great things and the author is super nice, and I’m so glad I did. Girl Out of Water was AMAZING overall. It cheered me up, and it was exactly what I needed. Anise’s anxiety felt so real and just like mine. This was the first time I actually could fully relate to a character’s anxiety.

I didn’t read the description before the book, so I didn’t expect Lincoln to be black and have one arm, but it added more to his characterization. I loved how Anise was forced to tackle the topic of her mother, but how it wasn’t the major plot of the book.

In the end, this book easily makes my list of favorites and I definitely would recommend it.