One With The Waves by Vezna Andrews (2023)
Talk about a beach read.....
If this book were any beach-ier, there'd be salt spray in your face and piles of sand pouring into your lap every time you opened it.
Overall, the stuff I loved about "One With The Waves" while diving into it (literally) outnumbered some few intrusive, annoying aspects of it.
Best of all.....its near rapturous evocation of the lore and romance you ever imagined about surfers and surfing. Everything you'd expect is all included here. The excitement, the natural beauty, the sheer exhilaration, hair-raising risks and danger of the sport. And most especially, the daredevil courage, athletic skill and physical stamina demanded of those brave hardy souls who dare the Pacific ocean's turbulent surf and towering waves.
The storyline, however, combining a teen girl's rocky coming-of-age with the adventurous challenges of surfing, suffers a couple of problematic bumps along the way.
Following her father's tragic illness and death, Ellie and her mom transplant themselves from New York to the Pacific coast home of her Uncle Charlie and Aunt Jen, both dedicated surfers.
Both grieving and suffering from their loss, Ellie and her mother seek solace in different directions.....Ellie escapes into the whole world of surfing, while her mother's rapidly succumbing to drugs and alcohol. As Ellie finds strength, comfort and confidence in honing her surfing skills she begins to acquire new friends and a first love. But on the down side, she's relentlessly bullied by a pack of high school mean girls straight up from the depths of hell.
Couldn't help but thrill to the many surfing sequences, most of which include Ellie's spectacular, endearing encounters with dolphins and seals. And surfing enthusiast Vezna Andrews takes readers on a deep, deep dive through just about everything in surfing culture, making the descriptions both fascinating and instructive.
Oh and the problematic moments? Well there's a little too much over-exaggerating in some of the characterizations. Uncle Charlie most of all, whose constant, overbearing goofball behavior would send any teen girl fleeing in embarrassment. And the villainous mean girls carry on like cardboard Cinderella step-sisters via the Brothers Grimm.
But fortunately, none of that will stop you from rooting for Ellie to overcome every obstacle in her path, sigh with her first kisses and dream of paddling out your surfboard right along side her to say "hi" to the dolphins....and become......ah, no wonder the book has a perfect title. 4 stars (****)
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