A Beautiful Family

★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

320 pages

What’s it about?

Alix is ten years old when she and her family go on a five-week beach vacation. Her mom is preoccupied with writing a book, her sister with boys, and her father with watching cricket. Almost as soon as she arrives, Alix meets a 12-year-old boy named Kahu, and he tells her about Charlotte- a girl who disappeared without a trace two years ago. They decide to spend the summer searching for clues as to what happened to her.

What did it make me think about?

The innocence of children.

Should I read it?

Well, this morphed from a family drama into something different. The author does a great job of unraveling the mystery in a way that the reader (as an adult) understands much better than ten-year-old Alix can. I thought this was a powerful debut novel. Anyone who enjoys suspense thrillers will likely appreciate this one.

A passage I marked

"Now I understand that a family wasn't a particularly solid thing- it was a bubble purely of our own making, and just like a bubble, it could burst."