Review: What the Waves Know by Tamara Valentine

What the Waves Know

by Tamara Valentine

Publisher: William Morrow

Pages: 352

Format: ARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  The tiny state of Rhode Island is home to even tinier Tillings Island—which witnessed the biggest event of Izabella Rae Haywood's life. For it was there, on Iz's sixth birthday, that her father left...and took her voice with him.

Eight years later in the summer of 1974, Iz’s mother is through with social workers, psychiatrists and her daughter's silence. In one last attempt to return Iz’s voice, the motley pair board the ferry to Tillings in hopes that the journey will help Izabella heal herself by piecing together splintered memories of the day her words fled.

But heartbreak is a difficult puzzle to solve, and everyone in Tillings seems to know something Iz does not. Worse, each has an opinion about Izabella's dreamer of a father, the undercurrents of whose actions have spun so many lives off course.

Now, as the island's annual Yemayá festival prepares to celebrate the ties that bind mothers to children, lovers to each other, and humankind to the sea, Izabella must unravel the tangled threads of her own history and reclaim a voice gone silent…or risk losing herself—and any chance she may have for a future—to the past.


Kritters Thoughts:  A young girl experiences something that at the age of 6 she can't comprehend and because of it, she goes mute for 8 years.  Her mother at her wits end decides that maybe they should go back to the island where the event occurred to possibly cure her daughter and find closure for them as a family.  And so the story began!

I was first interested in this book to see how an author can make a character full and whole without them able to speak their mind without use of words, but she did.  From the beginning, I wanted to know why Izabella went mute and what could help her find her words again.  I won't spoil the outcome, but I was happily surprised by how she found her words and what made her lose them in the first place.

I was excited to try out this new author and after this great book, I am definitely adding her to my must buy list.  I will be on the look out for what is coming next from her.

Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from TLC Book Tours.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.