THE FLOATING GIRLS by Lo Patrick

 

MY THOUGHTS

This is a debut novel and I hate that I'm writing this. I don't see how anyone can compare this to WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.. No comparison what so ever. 

This book did not do it for me. I read the whole thing and truly was left scratching my head. The young lady telling this story, Kay, is only twelve years old. She's rude to everyone. Has the vocabulary of a sailor. Treats her family like they are less than dirt. There is absolutely nothing about her was likable. She talks about getting married multiple times so she can have different experiences. She says things that no twelve year old I have ever met or read about. If the author had made her sixteen or even fifteen I would have found it more believable. This kid was horrid not funny or feisty. She was very disrespectful and hateful. She was also sneaky and had no respect at all for her parents, who are another whole mess. The parents were for the most part useless. A dad who would not work and the mother who was "tired" all the time. Not because she did anything either. Just useless. One time it mentions the dad working and all he did was put the mom down while complaining about his back and the hard work he did while it took her all day to cook potatoes. No wonder Kay was useless. 

I didn't like any of characters in this book. Maybe the son Freddy and only because he was super smart and wanted to go to a special school for gifted kids. This book is told strictly from Kay's pov and boy does she have a lot to say. Her biggest problem is her mouth. She never shut up and she wanted to be the center of everything. Anything and everything. 

I don't get where the title came from and I must have missed something because I don't get what the very beginning was all about with the two different things about the swamp and people being in it. Were they dead? Murdered? Still alive? What? I thought the couple was doing something they shouldn't have been doing and that was not murder. If you get my drift. lol 

I just didn't enjoy this book. I kept turning the pages all the way to the very end hoping something would happen to make me understand why everyone seems to think it's so great. I'm so sorry but it's not. It was just ok. A brat with a gutter mouth. Parents who were useless. Siblings that I felt sorry for. Neighbors who had secrets and I still am left wondering about. A cop that talked to a twelve year old like she was an adult. A lost child that I missed something about because I still wonder who did what to her. I know she was found but what happened. Or who happened I should say. I just didn't think this book was that good. It was just ok. 

If this kid would have been older it would have been a good book. Still lacking, but good. It just left me scratching my head. I don't like that. 

Thank you #NetGalley, #Sourcebooks for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

2.5-3/5 stars for me. I up it to 3 because I know it takes a lot of work to write and I appreciate that. I will try this author again if she writes another book. This one was just not for me. 

SYNOPSIS

"A masterly achievement." – Publishers Weekly STARRED review

"Many readers are looking for the next Where the Crawdads Sing, and will find The Floating Girls...is a close cousin." – Augusta Chronicle

The Floating Girls is stunning southern fiction, a wonderfully atmospheric coming-of-age family drama told from the perspective of a feisty 12-year-old girl—reminiscent of a modern-day Scout Finch—as she unravels the secrets that threaten her entire family.

Kay thought she knew everything there was to know about her family and their marsh life. But that was before the new neighbors arrived and her parents became suspects in a murder and a kidnapping. 

One hot, sticky summer in Bledsoe, Georgia, twelve-year-old Kay Whitaker stumbles across a stilt house in a neighboring marsh and upon Andy Webber, a boy about her age. He and his father have recently moved back to Georgia from California, and rumors of the suspicious drowning death of Andy's mother years earlier have chased them there and back.

Kay is fascinated and enamored with Andy, and she doesn't listen when her father tells her to stay away from the Webbers. But when Kay's sister goes missing, the mystery of Mrs. Webber's death—and Kay's parents' potential role in it—comes to light. Kay and her brothers must navigate the layers of secrets that emerge in the course of the investigation as their family, and the world as they knew it, unravels around them.

At once wickedly funny and heartbreaking, it is an immersive coming-of-age story narrated by a feisty, smart, yet undeniably vulnerable girl reminiscent of a modern-day Scout Finch—a character who will live in readers' hearts for a long time to come.

Praise for The Floating Girls:

"A powerhouse of a Southern novel. At once a poignant coming-of-age tale, a murder mystery, and an evocative tribute to the marshlands of Georgia. Lo Patrick is a standout new Southern voice." —Andrea Bobotis, author of The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt

"Kay is the smartest, funniest, most curious young narrator I have come across in some time. Her voice stuck with me long after I finished reading. If I met Kay on the street, I'd beg her to be my best friend." —Tiffany Quay Tyson, award-winning author of The Past is Never

"A cracking story that unfolds in gorgeous prose in the stultifying heat of the American South." —Hayley Scrivenor, author of Dirt Creek

"Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing will love this immersive mystery set against the salty air of Georgia's marshes. In Patrick's atmospheric prose, the water and its characters come to life." —Lindsey Rogers Cook, author of Learning to Speak Southern