A BEAUTIFUL FAMILY

Summer vacation is not what it seems.

Ten-year-old Alix, her 15-year-old sister, Vanessa, and their parents are in a New Zealand beach town for the summer. Vanessa, just old enough to find her family embarrassing, is pining over a school friend’s boyfriend. Alix’s parents are fighting constantly about things she only partly understands. Meanwhile, Alix has made a new friend, Kahu, a Māori boy also in town for the summer. The beach, with its rough waves and many secrets, is the setting of much of their burgeoning friendship; Alix and Kahu are searching for the remains of a young girl, Charlotte, who went missing a few summers before, presumably drowned. But when they discover a different body, Alix’s family risks coming apart entirely. This novel, part mystery and part Bildungsroman, is gripping; every chapter brings an unexpected twist, further complicating and deepening each storyline. Alix is a compelling narrator, though her 10-year-old naïveté can be grating—we understand, through her eyes, that her sister is sneaking out and getting drunk and that her mother is having an affair, but she’s not quite able to put the pieces together. And the plot occasionally veers a little toward the predictable (the creepy older man Alix sees watching her does, indeed, turn out to be creepy), without tying up all its loose ends.

A compelling—if not fully realized—debut.