Synopsis:
Aspiring costume designer Katie gave up everything in her divorce to gain custody of her fearful, faithful rescue dog, Barkimedes. While she figures out what to do next, she heads back to Florida to live with her grandmother, Nan.
But Katie quickly learns there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Nan. Like the fact that in her youth, Nan was a mermaid performer in a roadside attraction, swimming and dancing underwater with a close-knit cast of talented women. Although most of the mermaids have since lost touch, Katie helps Nan search for her old friends on Facebook, sparking hopes for a reunion show. Katie is up for making some fabulous costumes. But first, she must overcome her crippling fear of water.
As Katie’s college love, Luca, a documentary filmmaker, enters the fray, Katie struggles to balance her hopes with her anxiety. She begins to realize just how much Bark’s fears are connected to her own.
Swimming for Sunlight, from the author of Stay, is a charming yet thoughtful story of hope after loss and friendships that span generations.
Review:
Author Allie Larkin should win an award for the most gripping, enticing, and creative first line of a novel: “My husband brought a date to our divorce.”
Swimming for Sunlight is the delightful and thoroughly enjoyable story of costume designer Katie Ellis and her neurotic rescue dog, Barkimedes. After Katie’s aforementioned divorce, she moves back in with Nan, the paternal grandmother who raised her after her father’s death and her mother’s departure from her life. Katie arrives with little more than Bark, the clothes on her back, and her rundown car. She relinquished all of the marital assets to her lousy ex-husband just to ensure that she retained custody of her beloved Bark.
At her grandmother’s Florida home, she finds herself pulled into the lives of her grandmother’s close-knit group of friends. And they are a colorful, eclectic, adorable bunch of characters. Larkin lovingly brings each of them to life, and makes readers want to get acquainted with them and be part of their tight-knit circle of friendship. Nan and her friends were underwater performers — mermaids — when they were young. Now they’re planning a reunion performance and Katie is pressed to make their costumes for the big show. There are a few members unaccounted for, and Nan isn’t versed in social media. Katie comes to the rescue, scouring Facebook in search of the missing members of the long-ago mermaid troop.
The return of Luca, a documentary filmmaker who was Katie’s best friend but with whom she lost touch, complicates her time in Florida. She always had feelings for Luca, but back then her anxiety and insecurity prevented a relationship from blooming. Now Luca wants to make a film about the friends, their reunion, and the spectacular show they are planning. In the process, Luca and Katie grow close again. Larkin deftly constructs a classic, but charmingly entertaining “will they or won’t they?” storyline.
There’s another slight problem concerning the mermaid production and Katie’s participation. She’s deathly afraid of water as a result of the trauma she suffered surrounding her father’s untimely death.
Larkin injects her signature sense of humor into a frothy, sometimes silly but very endearing story. Although portions of it may be entirely predictable, that does not spoil the experience of watching Katie evolve and come to grips with her past, as well as forge a future for herself and her beloved Bark. As mentioned, Nan and her friends are the kind of neighbors every reader will wish lived next door to them, and Larkin’s affection for each of her characters is evident throughout the tale.
Yet at the heart of Swimming for Sunlight is a thoughtful examination of the ways in which trauma can cripple and inhibit, preventing us from fulfilling our dreams. The book is also a lovely examination of the beauty and value of multi-generational relationships. Larkin’s deft handling of her subject matter elevates the story, making it both emotionally resonant and memorable. Even so, Swimming for Sunlight is still a perfect book to read by the pool or on the beach.
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