Friday, November 27, 2015

Girl Underwater

"Oxygen masks bounce on seats like coiled springs. Someone's leopard-print luggage lands in the doorway between first class and coach. Lights are flickering. Alarms blaring. ... It occurs to me then, finally, that we're going down. There are other people sharing this nightmare, two hundred of them, seeing the same horrors and experiencing the same despair and hearing the same staccato beat of air and engines. Our paths were supposed to diverge again in Boston, but they didn't. We're here. We're ending. Together."

Sophomore Avery Delacorte is flying home for Thanksgiving when her flight crashes in the Colorado Rockies. The plane lands in a remote mountain lake. There are only five survivors: Avery, three little boys, and Colin Shea, a fellow swimmer on Avery's college swim team. Together they must face the cold, the snow, the fears of three small boys, and the uncertainty that all of them will be rescued in time.

Girl Underwater by Claire Kells is more than a story of wilderness survival; it's also the story of the aftermath of that plane crash and how Avery is affected by everything that happened before, during, and after. Not only does she have to deal with the psychological and physical trauma, she has to deal with her feelings for Colin, and her hopes and fears for the future. This novel is nicely complicated, well developed and very absorbing. I read it in two days. But then I'm a sucker for survival stories, especially when they end well. And this book's ending made me smile.

Happy Reading!


2 comments:

  1. This sounds intense! I have a bit of a fear of flying - well, mostly of landing :) and I cope by reading straight through the flight, or falling asleep if I can. I don't think I'd read this too close to a trip - but I will put it on my list.

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    1. You don't spend a lot of pages on the actual plane crash...most of the book deals with after the crash, and the aftermath after she's rescued ... but I still wouldn't read it while I was flying. :)

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