Title: Surfacing
Author: Nora Raleigh Baskin
Publisher: Candlewick
Publication Date: March 2013
Classification: YA Novel

Summary from Goodreads:

A lyrical and deeply moving portrait of grief, blame, and forgiveness, and of finding the courage to confront your ghosts — one truth at a time.

As soon as she was under, Maggie heard the quiet, though every sound was amplified in her ears and in her brain…Sound, like shame, travels four times faster under the water.
Though only a sophomore, Maggie Paris is a star on the varsity swim team, but she also has an uncanny, almost magical ability to draw out people’s deepest truths, even when they don’t intend to share them. It’s reached a point where most of her classmates, all but her steadfast best friend, now avoid her, and she’s taken to giving herself away every chance she gets to an unavailable — and ungrateful — popular boy from the wrestling team, just to prove she still exists. Even Maggie’s parents, who are busy avoiding each other and the secret deep at the heart of their devastated family, seem wary of her. Is there such a thing as too much truth?

My Thoughts:

I was big into swimming when I was a kid. I would be in the pool from morning till night as many months out of the year that I could get away with. I was also on a swim team for 8 years so the fact that this book had swimming as one main plot line really drew me in.

The characters in this book are a little difficult to like at first. Maggie is a girl who is in over her head to be quite honest about it. She never really seems to know where she is going in life and she makes a lot of bad decisions. She wants to be with a guy who has no interest in her other than for sex! I have no clue why she was so interested in this guy from the start of the book on, especially as the story went on she found a really nice guy to be with! I really liked Julie and Nathan, I felt like they were the calming moments in this crazy story. I felt like everytime Maggie got out of control that Julie was there to calm her down and bring her back to reality which I really liked that about her. Nathan was a nice guy and yet Maggie didn’t always treat him properly.

The storyline was where the book was again just slightly difficult to understand at first. The story jumps between Maggie and Leah telling pieces of the story and often when you are reading from Maggie’s pov the story will have random flash backs in the middle of scenes. It took a little while to get use to the way the story was told but once you get the hang of it the story really does show you some amazing things about Maggie’s family, her upbringing, and what she really wants out of life.

Overall, while I do feel like I struggled with this book in certain areas I really liked the overall message the author was trying to give the reader. I really like that Maggie in the end wasn’t perfect and she made some bad choices. I mean after all everyone of us has made some poor choices in the past and I feel like we have to make those bad choices now and then in order to really grow, learn, and change for the better. In the end I know that Maggie had to go through a lot but I like to think walking away from the book that she will grow into a better person and not treat people badly in the future. Sometimes the heart must bleed in order for it to find what it is really looking for.