ALA Booklist (Fri Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2019)

Twelve-year-old Miranda, who feels rejected by her mother, spends a month on a Florida island with Mom's childhood friend Clare and her family. Miranda tries to conquer her deep-rooted fear of water during sailing lessons with Clare's daughter, Sammy, and their friend Caleb. Hoping to learn more about Mom's mysterious past on the island, Miranda and Sammy look for clues. When a dare leads to Miranda breaking into an apparently abandoned house, she's caught by the old man who lives there. Later, after a dramatic event uncovers buried memories, she begins to piece the past together in ways that may help her entire family move forward. It will come as no surprise that a tragic event in the past is the source of the family's multigenerational emotional turmoil, but the use of coincidences and a melodramatic plot twist undermine the story's credibility. Standish creates a number of sympathetic characters, though, and readers who enjoyed her first novel, The Ethan I Was Before (2017), may want to give this one a try.

Horn Book (Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)

Twelve-year-old Miranda is shipped off for a month to August Isle, the Florida island where her mother spent summers as a child. Miranda uncovers secrets from her mother's past and learns to face her fears--including that her often-absent mother, a photographer who eagerly accepts faraway assignments, doesn't love her anymore. Standish deftly explores guilt, fear, love, and the power of stories in this poignant tale.

Kirkus Reviews

A family mythos spun with thread as fragile as tears can tangle into knots. Sometimes the threads break.Miranda's grandparents on her mother's side have always been a secret, one of the many mysteries that lie between her and her beautiful yet elusive mother. The summer before eighth grade, Miranda is mired in a web of fears and anxiety. The fabric connecting her and her mother feels threadbare. Her mother, a freelance photographer who travels the world, always appears so fearless. But she is distant, and Miranda is desperate to uncover what she must've done to make her mother always choose to leave her. When a great career opportunity arises for her mom to go to Argentina while her lawyer dad is preparing a big case, Miranda gets the chance to visit August Isle and stay with one of her mom's old friends who has a daughter her age. Why has mom never visited the place where she grew up? Finally, she might be able to answer her questions. The result is a beautifully written story, lush as a Florida mangrove. Standish introduces young readers to a concept that's foreign to many at their age: that grown-ups can suffer deep emotional pain same as young people. Miranda is white, and the book adheres to the white default; her mom's friend's husband is Indian, and their children are biracial and brown-skinned.An emotional journey of family, friendship, loss, and healing. (Fiction. 10-14)