Wonderful, dreamlike. An author to look out for.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

A younger sister narrates the tale of her mother - prone to make the wrong choices as regards men and her older sister, again bad boy choices. She tells us right away that this is the story of when her sister helped kill someone - so you know where the plot is going to take you.

It is a descriptive, talk about feeling sort of book, with a bit of legal action thrown in at the end. It was all totally fine - nothing to frighten the horses, but then nothing to set your heart pacing either. Just fine.

Ocean State is a quiet and yet propulsive novel delving into love and the things it makes us do.

“When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl. She was in love, my mother said, like it was an excuse,” socially awkward and Marie tells us in the first few lines.

And Marie knows exactly the kind of senseless, destructive things love can make you do: she and her older and popular sister Angel have seen happen over and over again with their mother, as she stumbled into a series of failing and abusive relationship, swayed and pulled in all directions by the men in her life. Dragging her helpless, increasingly bitter daughters along with her.

Ocean State retraces the events and the choices that led Angel, Marie’s pretty and popular older sister, to commit the murder. With incredible compassion and humanity, we witness it from different POVs: Marie’s, Angel’s, and the helpless, lovestruck victim’s, Birdy. All of it takes place against the backdrop of working class America, made sharper by the wealth of Birdy and Angel’s love interest, Myles.

Don’t expect turns and twists. Angel’s motivation and inner workings are not immediately apparent, either, and may appear glossed over. More than an explosion, Ocean State is a millennium of rain: slowly, and steadily, eroding mountains drop after drop. You will be left aching, tenderly, for these women and girls, and for the choices that they never had.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A really intriguing story that is about much more than a teenage murderer. I found the story, told from the perspectives of two sisters and the victim, to be a really seamless way to narrate the story. A quiet but gripping story.