City News

Avery Delacorte is nineteen and a natural born swimmer. She loves the water, and has ever since she was a little girl. After high school, she moves up into collegiate swimming, and when she finally graduated to sophomore year, she finally feels like she is in the place she needs to be: popular. She has an amazing boyfriend, Lee, and a spot on a nationally ranked swim team.
Everything is going her way. For Thanksgiving break, Avery's flight home lands her in the middle of the Colorado Rockies, stranded with no way to reach anybody outside of the mountains. She, three young boys and Colin Shea, Avery's teammate who she has been steering clear of since the first day of freshman year, are the only survivors and are forced to fight the freezing
temperatures, little food and no shelter. Protecting the boys and herself comes easily to the daughter of a surgeon, but in protecting Colin, she doesn't know how. The journey follows her back and forth in time, recollecting pieces of her memory and after she recovers in the hospital. Avery is scared of the water, un-sure of her memories and wondering which emotion is the correct one. Once she arrives home, she realizes that even though she pulled through, she may not have made it back alive. 

This book is seriously one of the best books I've read. A few points in the analysis though. Avery is a very serious characters, when sometimes, she could
stand to be a bit more forgiving. She treats Colin in such a way that it makes you wonder what the story is there. It also is teasing a thought of wonder in you as a reader, because there are flashback/forwards. It is a confusing journey through the entire book. I will say that the mini-love triangle happening was nothing short of a misunderstanding and a good heart, but that it caused some things to happen that may not have necessarily have been the right thing to happen. Lastly, the friendship between the characters and the strength there is a good reminder that it is just a book, but it is a tad blinding to the reality that they really are stuck on a mountain with nobody to find them. It tests Avery's limits and her identity as a swimmer, but at the same time,
you have to remember that it is blinding to the reality.

All in all, it is a very good book.  I am going to say, for this book that I will rate it a 5/5. The book is just so wonderful, and I have read it multiple times. I think that the plot is a great reminder of indent it you in ourselves, but also not to judge others. The only thing that would throw me off is the idea that the book is so great, that it is a little blinding to the idea of the book, and that it is a serious painful moment. All in all though, I think this book deserves a 5/5, and so that is what I am giving it.

Check out Girl Underwater at the Newport Beach Public Library.