Abandoned by Booklikes

So this may end up being my review for this book. I don't know yet. I do know that I have some weird viral thing that has resulted in me coughing since Thursday and led to me not being able to sleep since then too since anytime I tried to lay down I coughed.

So "Swimming for Sunlight." I went back and forth on this one. The main character is Katie Ellis who divorces her husband and takes her rescue dog Bark back to Florida to stay with her maternal grandmother, Nan. Katie gives up everything that she is entitled to so her husband doesn't get joint custody of the dog. So she arrives with paper bags filled with clothes and I kid you not when your grandmother quizzes her about not getting cardboard boxes she explains her dog, Bark, doesn't like them. I should have known what I was getting into from that point. 

Katie was a freaking martyr and didn't even see it. She was also causing her dog severe anxiety due to her actions. I did feel sorry for her. She was there when her father died and she pulled him from the lake they were swimming at. Cue her mother dumping her to live with her grandmother while she followed men all over the world and stopped communicating with her. So there is sympathy for Katie, but I got annoyed at how she dealt with everything. She tells her grandmother Nan that Bark can't be walked since he is so scared so they dance around the living room for exercise. Yeah my face is your face right now. Katie also can't handle going to funerals since it reminds her of her father so she's been largely absent with her childhood best friend who lost two grandparents and her grandmother's best friend who also lost a spouse. Everyone just excuses it and it drives me up the wall. And then we finally get into the one who got away and once again it was 100 percent her fault and I just hard sighed when we finally read about what tore them apart.

That said, Katie didn't deserve the break up of her marriage due to her husband's cheating and though she seems to have found a sense of closure in the end I just rolled my eyes.

Larkin doesn't spend much time developing secondary characters past a few people such as Nan, Bunny, Mo, Mr. Issac and Luca. Other characters drop in and drop out with Katie getting "insight" into them. Not enough to stop being a drama queen though. I get she has abandonment issues but good grief. Luca was the most patient person in the world. I really wish there had been more discussion between them when it finally comes out what caused them to end back in college. It felt like such a flimsy BS excuse that if I were Luca I would have been done at that moment. For me, how can you trust that you won't do something else the person won't like and they won't push you away for years. 

That said though I couldn't put this book down. I loved reading about how Katie came to love sewing and show she got into costume work. Her working at Mr. Issac's shop was highlight and her doing research on how to create her grandmother and the other "mermaids" outfits was interesting. I got so curious about underwater costume work and makeup after reading this book. 

The writing starts off slow at first and the flow was a bit off at the beginning. I think that's because as readers we are reading Katie tell her story in her own way and for the most part she is trying to hide things from herself and has to lie to herself that her dog is fully dependent on her so she has reasons to say no to doing anything.

The setting of Florida didn't feel like a proper setting though. I think because most of the book takes place at Katie's grandmother's home, Mo's house and Mr. Issac's shop. We read about it, but I can't recall if Larkin described the smell of the ocean being nearby, the humidity, etc. This could have taken place anywhere. 

The ending ends on a hopeful note and you do root for Katie in the end. Being held hostage to all of the bad things that can happen all the time sounds exhausting.