I don’t consider myself a book blogger or bookstagrammer, but people seemed to appreciate when I posted an actual review on Instagram the other day. Maybe I should get back in the habit?
If I’m going to get back in the habit, though, I want to cross post my reviews here for posterity. Feel free to follow me on Instagram, Goodreads, or Amazon. I post there because it helps lift up fellow authors (and their books). Readers also use these sites to help them choose what to read next. However, if I put measurable effort into something — including a short and casual book review — I like to keep it on a platform I own.
Plus, I can post my full(er) thoughts here without worrying about character limits.
A Hand to Hold in Deep Water
To that end, I have to share this book with you: A HAND TO HOLD IN DEEP WATER by Shawn Nocher. It traveled with me through some gnarly times over the month of December, and I can’t think of a more fitting companion.
A HAND TO HOLD IN DEEP WATER is very ambitious in a number of ways for a debut novel. I think you can tell when an author has taken the time to mature their craft to the point where they can do a particular story justice. Shawn Nocher tackles some extremely heavy and sensitive issues in this book, and she pulls it off with unflinching grace.
The story
At the heart of the story we have Lacey, who returns home to her stepfather’s farm to tend to her preschool-age daughter through a scary health crisis. This stirs up a minefield of unresolved trauma around her own mother’s disappearance when she was six — very close to her own daughter’s age now.
Terrified of losing her daughter, Lacey has to know: how could a mother choose to leave her child? Why have she and her stepfather never discussed her mother’s leaving? As she gets closer to the horrifying answers to these questions, we see the true power of family bonds, and what it means to bear witness through each others’ deepest pain.
My take
These themes felt especially poignant for me in this moment. I loved the way the author made this story feel so relatable despite the extremity of what its characters endured. Also, every character felt vividly imagined and became a real person in my mind. I truly regretted getting to the last chapter and saying goodbye to these people.
There are some big content warnings on this one re: childhood illness and abuse, some of which happens on page, so do take care of you aren’t in a place to digest that right now. That said, this was a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me — substantively, I wouldn’t have changed a thing, and I spent some wayyyy-too-late nights reading.
What’s your most recent five-star read? Sometimes I go through a real dry spell but I had several in 2022!
Links:
- My reviews of this book on Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon
- More about the author, Shawn Nocher
- Get the book at your local indie bookstore (always my recommendation)
- Amazon affiliate link
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