At the Water's Edge

Book: At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen

Genre: fiction, historical fiction

Rating: seven out of ten slippery sea monsters 🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🌑🌑🌑 (yes I know they are dragons, but there isn’t a Loch Ness Monster emoji)

Sara Gruen, the same author of Water for Elephants, writes this slightly haunting story of myth and mystery. I purchased this book as a fan of Gruen’s previous work and also because I am an absolute sucker for anything even remotely involving the Loch Ness monster. While I loved the book, anyone with an admitted soft spot for good ole Nessie be forewarned, she is but a mere side note.

At the Water’s Edge takes place in 1940’s Scotland in the midst of World War II. The story follows American-born Madeline Hyde in her efforts to support her husband Ellis’ search for the infamous Loch Ness monster. As she struggles to adjust to the provincial country life of the Highlands, she not only comes to learn about the horrific realities of the raging war, but begins to unravel the dangerous secrets lurking within her own marriage. At the Water’s Edge is a romantic take on the legend that intrigues us all and a commentary on the blindness love can sometimes inspire (you should be aware that I have made a very clever pun here, because Ellis is color blind).

I tend to enjoy Gruen’s books because of her choice of settings that innately border on the fantastical (1930’s traveling circus, 1940’s Loch Ness, etc.), so much so that the stories feel like they are dabbling in magical realism even though no fantasy elements are actually introduced. And even though the plot was intensely predictable, Maddie was immensely endearing and it was pleasant watching (reading?) her grow into herself and gain the confidence and strength that the women of the 40’s were known for.

I will say, though, Gruen’s development of the character Ellis is very inconsistent. I don’t want to give much away, but she struggles to link the person Ellis is at the beginning of the book to the one he becomes by the end, so it ends up feeling like his character goes from zero to one hundred. His transformation at the end of the book loses its believability because of the amount of time Gruen spends building him up at the start. It would have been more effective if Gruen had made the effort to pace Ellis’s character degradation better. The only other criticism I have is that it seemed like Gruen was trying too hard to place the book in its historical time period. Water for Elephants read very effortlessly; it embodied the 1930’s seamlessly. This book? Not so much. In several instances it felt like Gruen was name dropping historical references as if to prove to the reader that she did her research. And not to say that they were incorrect, they just didn't meld with the story easily. For example her incorporation of “coalie flowers”, while incredibly historically prevalent, was so forced that it threw off the genuineness of the entire chapter.

These shortcomings are slight and insignificant in comparison to the pleasure that reading this book was. Especially if you like a romantic period piece, I would so thoroughly recommend it!

To view or purchase this book, here is its link on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/At-Waters-Edge-Sara-Gruen/dp/0385523246/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510678560&sr=8-1&keywords=at+the+water%27s+edge