Shallow Pond

By Alissa Grosso

Everyone in Shallow Pond knows the Bunting Sisters. 
Nobody knows their Secrets.

Annie is the oldest. The sickly one who gave up on her own life so she could raise her sisters after their parents died. Gracie is the wild child. She wants a man so bad, she’ll do anything it takes to get one. Barbara, the youngest, hates being constantly mistaken for her sisters. She wants nothing more than to finish senior year and get out of Shallow Pond—before she succumbs to her unwanted attraction to the new boy in town, Zach Faraday.

When Annie’s enigmatic illness takes a turn for the worse, Barbara begins to search for the truth of her family’s past. But Shallow Pond offers only lies and deceit. The one thing Barbara can trust is her halting connection to Zach—an unsettling bond that may be the answer to a mystery that doesn’t want to be solved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Jul 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9780738732800

Alissa Grosso

A former children's librarian and newspaper editor, Alissa Grosso is the author of the young adult novels Popular and Ferocity Summer. She is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and currently works as a sales consultant for a book distributor. Grosso grew up in New Jersey, where she graduated from Lenape Valley Regional High School, and earned a bachelor's degree in English from Rutgers University. She now lives in the Philadelphia area.

Reviews for Shallow Pond

[mirandalg14 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What started out as your basic contemporary novel where girl finds herself and makes peace with her life quickly switched gears with a twist I really enjoyed. A great book for a discussion about nature vs. nurture and genetics vs. individuality. This was something I didn't expect and I really enjoyed it.

Thanks to netgalley.com and Flux Books for allowing me access to this title.

[goorgoahead · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a hard book to review without spoiling major plot points, but I'll try. For most of this book, I was just not sure at all what I was reading. Was it a mystery? Was it a romance? Why is there so much angst? Why are Barbara's friends so crappy? And then around 60% in, the book took a massive turn into into sci-fi-ville in a plot device that the story never really fully capitalized on. This is a book that I kept reading because I really wanted to know what the catch was -- you can tell for most of the story that there is something else going on beneath the surface, but no one really knows what is is, our characters included.

Barbara, like the reader, realizes there's something else going on other than her dysfunctional family and sad past, but the conclusions she jumps to are rapid-fire and ... maybe they're believable to her, but they felt ridiculous to me, and the way she latches on to what she feels is the "truth" so early kind of signals to the reader that she is, in reality, probably dead wrong.

I think my biggest problem was that I had to endure far too much nonsense to get to the big reveal. Once we get there, the story gets a little better as the secrets start to come out fast and furious, but this felt like a sci-fi book written for people who don't like sci-fi. The plot twist is shoved in with no thought as to how to make it realistic. Annie is sick the entire book and we never get a good resolution on this, and the explanation feels sort of amateur. There's a lot of very handwaved science, like no one wanted to do any research into any of the science things that would make her sickness believable.

The romance between Barbara and Zach was frustrating, with Barbara doing her best to push him away. Understandable, because she's determined to get out of Shallow Pond, and she's afraid that falling for a guy is going to get her sucked into staying. So of course they fall into can't-be-without-you love. Of course! Before they get there, though, she spends a lot of time refusing to even be his friend, but also totally shutting him, and her friends, out as to her reasoning why. Barbara's friends are crappy, to be sure, constantly jumping to their own conclusions, and I wish they'd all just take a deep breath and use their words.

There were just some weird writing and character choices that frustrated me. Characters, especially middle sister Gracie, were constantly screaming or shouting or shrieking. I've never seen so many said-is-dead dialogue tags in one book, and I just imagined Gracie screaming shrilly every time she was on the page. Which she usually was, because her characterization was just all over the place. Several characters have dark secrets that are actually very serious and sobering but which are never treated with the appropriate gravity and thought they deserve. Barbara volunteers at a women's crisis hotline and for some reason we're treated to her opinion that basically all the women calling just need to tough it up and get over it, which didn't really endear her to me.

This is a book that really just had too much going on and couldn't decide what genre it wanted to be. Combine that with some unsympathetic characters and a sci-fi mystery that falls flat, and you've got an overall frustrating read.

[vanyadrum · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

NOTE: I received the eARC through Netgalley.

Let me first say that I had no idea what I was getting myself into with this one. The summary made it sound like an interesting story. However, it turned out to be flat and one of those reads I just want to be through with, you know?

I think this would've made a much better futuristic novel if there were more details provided on how those girls ended up being the same. Not just claiming they were clones and that's the end of it. Seriously, the entire book (except the last few chapters) was full with incredibly silly speculations that made me want to just close it and never open it again.

Like I said, providing the necessary details can go a long way. As it were, we were just presented with a mystery that turned into a secret that simply came out in the open. And we were just left to wonder "what on earth?" There wasn't even a good romance going on to compensate for the dullness of the storyline. So, most of the time I was left wondering why I was reading this book in the first place.

I guess the topics the author addresses are relevant, but the way they're presented is flat and boring. There's talk of abuse, sick obsession, misinterpretation of facts, yada yada. But I couldn't care less. Which makes the book not good enough.