Under Water

God, I loved Under the Water by Tara Mellon. Any book that begins with a budding friendship between two young girls on an island off the coast of Thailand is going to have me clamoring to read it.

At five years old, Maria loses her mother, and her father is determined to return to the island where he and his wife first fell in love so he can finish her research. What begins as a place defined by grief slowly becomes a place where father and daughter begin to heal from an unthinkable blow.

Arielle’s mother operates the hotel her parents bought for her and her husband as a wedding gift, and Arielle has the run of the place. When she and Maria meet at school, they become fast friends, and they bop back and forth between Maria’s quieter island life and Arielle’s more cosmopolitan existence at the resort. Together, the girls play in the beauty of the island’s reefs, forests, and beaches. They learn to dive, holding their breath for minutes at a time, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. They learn to swim their way out of danger until a wave comes that Arielle cannot outswim, leaving Maria gutted with loss.

Years later, Maria is back in New York, adrift and still haunted by the memory of her friend. Over the course of two fateful days, as another cataclysm approaches the city and the past comes rushing back, she must reckon with what happened on that island and learn how to keep herself afloat in a precarious world. Loved this one!

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