REVIEW: Water Music by Marcia Peck is her debut novel and is loosely based on her life growing up in New Jersey and spending the summers on Cape Cod. While I enjoyed this book I did find it was a bit depressing. It pulled at my heartstrings and had me hoping that things would turn out for this family.

This story is about 12 year old Lily Grainger and her family spending the summer of 1956 on Cape Cod. There is so much heartache for this little girl. She is struggling and her parents are so wrapped up in their wants and needs, I feel Lily falls through the cracks. I have to hand it to her. She does not give up. My heart melted when she and her mother walked wide circles around each other. Her father was more compassionate but still had his own agenda. I wanted to put my arms around her and give her some encouragement.

There is a hurricane that comes through one night that was not supposed to be dangerous. Life was lost and the tides of their lives changed. Some for the better and some for the worst. This book gives us a lot to think about in our own relationships with our families. Although it was thought provoking it contained a sense of adventure for Lily and her cousins. 

If you love a good family saga that takes place in an earlier and maybe not so simple time, this should be a book you consider for your next read. Until next time…Happy Reading!

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I received a complimentary copy of this book for review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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SYNOPSIS: The bridge at Sagamore was closed when we got there that summer of 1956. We had to cross the canal at Buzzards Bay over the only other roadway that tethered Cape Cod to the mainland.

Thus twelve-year-old Lily Grainger, while safe from ‘communists and the Pope,’ finds her family suddenly adrift. That was the summer the Andrea Doria sank, pilot whales stranded, and Lily’s father built a house he couldn’t afford. Target practice on a nearby decommissioned Liberty Ship echoed not only the rancor in her parents’ marriage, a rancor stoked by Lily’s competitive uncle, but also Lily’s troubles with her sister, her cousins, and especially with her mother. In her increasingly desperate efforts to salvage her parents’ marriage, Lily discovers betrayals beyond her understanding as well as the small ways in which people try to rescue each other. She draws on her music lessons and her love of Cape Cod—from Sagamore and Monomoy to Nauset Spit and the Wellfleet Dunes, seeking safe passage from the limited world of her salt marsh to the larger, open ocean.