Jennifer E. Smith

There's a slow build to this story about a rockstar musician trying to rebuild her confidence after a disastrous onstage meltdown, and her prickly relationship with her father, all the while on an Alaskan cruise that was planned to take place under very different circumstances.

The cover art and general promotional quotes make the novel look more romance-y than it is. Yes, there's a love story subplot, but it never takes center stage and never threatens to push the story into chicklit territory.… (more)

“She closes her eyes, and what swims to the surface is an image of the glacier the other day, all those ashes floating off, black pinpricks against stark white sky, like the opposite of stars” (287).

Like the characters, their relationships, and their circumstances, this whole book feels like a series of involuntary pushes and pulls, stopping and going, forward momentum and stagnant spaces. There’s a constant sad frustration, a frosty glaze over each page, especially between father and daughter whose relationship feels frozen, stuck in a rut.

As Greta and Conrad grieve for Helen (mother, wife, glue) in their own ways, it’s easy to also long for her presence, knowing she would mediate, referee, alleviate. But part of getting unstuck is learning how to adjust to their family’s changing dynamics: How can they be a family without Helen? How can they reconcile their fragile, bruised relationship? How can two opposites—a risk-taker and a risk-container, a dreamer and a realist, an astronomer and an oceanographer—come to common ground, even if that ground is a large iceberg in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness?

What I Like:
• I love a story about family dynamics, especially with a little dysfunction. This one isn’t quite dysfunctional but definitely includes interesting dynamics: who gets along, who doesn’t; who’s alike, who’s not.
• Music and musings about the steerage of life’s course make this novel feel warmly layered—the way a good literary fiction should feel.
• The structure of the story takes place over the weeklong cruise, sections divided by days as we slowly sojourn with these stuck-in-place characters on a moving boat (er, ship).
• The Alaskan setting is the perfect backdrop for these characters and their situations: a little gray, a little lonely, a little magical—full of wild and wonder.… (more)