The Water Child
Seventeen-year-old Tora Hayashi has always been irresistibly drawn to the ocean, lulled by the dream of becoming a pearl diver like her free-spirited, adventurous mother. But when their family moves to Tokyo, Tora’s beloved Okaasan becomes increasingly withdrawn, opening up an impassable chasm between mother and daughter.
Then Tora’s mother vanishes in the middle of the night, taking only her most precious possession: a pearl-white diving suit, locked away when they left Miyako. Believing that Okaasan may have returned to the sea, Tora persuades her best friend, Sakura, to accompany her back to their coastal hometown under the guise of a spring break trip. There, Tora begins to unravel a complicated web of painful secrets about her mother’s past…and discovers the real reason for the distance between her and Okaasan.
As Tora struggles to regain her balance, the entire coastline is hit by a brutal earthquake. With buildings collapsing and tsunami sirens wailing, Tora and a group of refugees race against a towering wall of water to reach high ground. But when time runs out, it’ll take every ounce of strength she has to survive in a world where the ocean she loves is now bent on destroying her.
About the Author:
Ellen McGinty is an emerging author of Young Adult fiction, co-host of The Spinning Pen blog, and a working mom of three boys residing in Japan. Half her family is Texan—the cowboy variety—and the other half has lived in Asia for three generations. When not writing about brave adventures, she’s often exploring the unbeaten road.
Reading Historical Fiction has never truly been my cup of tea. I would rather enjoy traveling to places that I will never get to see. In a way, I think it has to do with the fact that I have never truly enjoyed history. History has always been a very hard subject for me. Reading this book opened my eyes to the fact that even though I do not like history, I can still read a historical fiction book and enjoy it.
The Water Child is set up in Japan and it is the only book that I have ever read that was set up in Japan. Most of the books that I read tend to be set up in America. I do not know why I tend to read books that are set in America, I just do. Reading this book transported me to an area that I have never been in my life. I was able to perfectly see the image that McGinty wanted us to see in her book! I could not have asked for a better book to send me traveling to Japan!
During the story I was hooked, I could not put the book down because of the fact I needed to know if Tora was going to survive. The fact that the very thing that Tora trusted, ended up hurting those around her made Tora become such a round character. I love that in it’s own way, the ocean became a character. I do not know if McGinty meant this to happen, but to me the ocean became a character that I grew to fall in love with.
The only thing that I struggles with was the fact that there was part of the Japanese language that I was not able to understand. That there was definitions of each word in the book. This is would have helped me better understand what was going on.
I received this book in exchange for my honest review. My thoughts are my own.
