Click to purchase! Publisher: Doubleday Books
Release Date: July 18, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Source: Publicist/Publisher
Genre: General Fiction
Rating: 4 bookmarks
Synopsis: Growing up in Little Harbor, Maine, the daughter of a widowed lobsterman, Eliza Barnes could haul a trap and row a skiff with the best of them. But she always knew she'd leave that life behind. Now that she's married, with two kids and a cushy front-row seat to suburban country club gossip in an affluent Massachusetts town, she feels adrift.
When her father injures himself in a boating accident, Eliza pushes the pause button on her own life to come to his aid. But when she arrives in Maine, she discovers her father's situation is more dire than he let on. Eliza's homecoming is further complicated by the reemergence of her first love--and memories of their shared secret. Then Eliza meets Mary Brown, a seventeen-year-old local who is at her own crossroad, and Eliza can't help but wonder what her life would have been like if she'd stayed.
* This book was provided by BookSparks in exchange for an honest review.
Release Date: July 18, 2017
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Source: Publicist/Publisher
Genre: General Fiction
Rating: 4 bookmarks
Synopsis: Growing up in Little Harbor, Maine, the daughter of a widowed lobsterman, Eliza Barnes could haul a trap and row a skiff with the best of them. But she always knew she'd leave that life behind. Now that she's married, with two kids and a cushy front-row seat to suburban country club gossip in an affluent Massachusetts town, she feels adrift.
When her father injures himself in a boating accident, Eliza pushes the pause button on her own life to come to his aid. But when she arrives in Maine, she discovers her father's situation is more dire than he let on. Eliza's homecoming is further complicated by the reemergence of her first love--and memories of their shared secret. Then Eliza meets Mary Brown, a seventeen-year-old local who is at her own crossroad, and Eliza can't help but wonder what her life would have been like if she'd stayed.
* This book was provided by BookSparks in exchange for an honest review.
Sometimes in life you get dealt bad cards, the ones that seem like your world is ending or that you might not be strong enough to get through. In Meg Mitchell Moore’s book, the Captain’s Daughter, she portrays the realistic hardships of life for all her characters in vivid detail that draws you into their lives. Told in the style of alternating viewpoints from the different characters, Mitchell Moore does a great job developing the story of every one of her characters. Reading the chapters you can really tell that each one has their own voice, personality, and you can literally feel their emotions as they try to deal with life’s surprises. From the start, her descriptions make you feel like you are actually there with the characters, and even though the pace of the book is a little slow, the chapters aren’t that long, and you don’t mind because she makes the character’s story interesting enough.
My favorite part about the book is how relatable the characters are. Eliza’s story brings the push/pull of feeling out of place (too much fisherman’s life to fit into the country club, and too much of her new life keeps her from really fitting back into the town she grew up in). At the same time she’s dealing with the woes of growing older: aging parents, pre-teen kids, and growing out of touch with her husband. It would resonate with anyone who at any point in their life wondered how they got where they were, felt longing for the past, or had no clue how to continue. The character of Mary is also an easy one to warm up to as her story comes with many different kinds of dramas than Eliza’s. The teenage worries and early life confusion make her story relatable to a wide audience.
I would give this book a rating of 4 bookmarks because it kept me wanting to read the next chapter, and I haven’t felt this “lost” in a book for a long time. Mitchell Moore works her magic with words to create a story that unveils pieces of the characters lives as you go on, and brings you along as the story unfolds. But it’s not only the imagery that draws you in, it’s the emotion and the messages that build you up as you follow your characters through heartbreak and hopelessness. The theme of “When in doubt, choose brave” stays with the reader, even after the last page.
I would give this book a rating of 4 bookmarks because it kept me wanting to read the next chapter, and I haven’t felt this “lost” in a book for a long time. Mitchell Moore works her magic with words to create a story that unveils pieces of the characters lives as you go on, and brings you along as the story unfolds. But it’s not only the imagery that draws you in, it’s the emotion and the messages that build you up as you follow your characters through heartbreak and hopelessness. The theme of “When in doubt, choose brave” stays with the reader, even after the last page.
