Moonglass

Moonglass is a debut novel by Jessi Kirby, a great young adult read.

Anna and her father have relocated over the summer before her junior year. Anna is unhappy about the move, angry to leave her friends, although she does feel that her father has picked a great location - a cottage on the beach -to move to. Anna finds out that her mother, who died when she was just seven, grew up on this same beach in this same town. Anna has few memories of her mother, one of them of their time picking up moonglass from the beach. Now that she is living in a place her mother once knew, she is beginning to wonder a bit more about her mom, although it is hard because of how she died, and Anna's feelings about this.

Kirby's novel explores a lot of different things- Anna's relationship with her dad, her coming to terms with her mom's death, and Anna's forays into dating and friendship at her new school. I was especially surprised by the way in which Kirby incorporated a man who appeared to be homeless who walked, hunched over all day each Sunday on the beach, with the message "Repent" on his t-shirt. When his true identity is revealed, it fits very well into the story and left me smiling.

I liked this novel a lot. I've been seeing a lot of Moonglass on the internet and happily agree with the many positive reviews out there.