‘Stone Cove Island’ by Suzanne Myers

Published by Soho Press,
13 November 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-61695-437-6

Seventeen-year-old Eliza Elliot has always loved her home on Stone Cove Island. It is her place and the people who live there are her community. When a hurricane devastates the island, Eliza is desperate to help with the clean up. In the island lighthouse she discovers a letter that seems to be a confession to an unsolved crime of thirty years ago, the murder of a local teenager, Bess Linsky.

Unlike Eliza, Charlie Pender had been eager to leave the island. A year or two older than Eliza, he is now an intern at a Boston newspaper. He was on a visit to his parents when the hurricane struck and is now trapped on the island until communications are re-established.

Although Eliza and Charlie have always known each other, this is the first time that they have been thrown together by a common cause. Their friendship grows and a tentative romance starts as Charlie helps Eliza to investigate the mystery of Bess' fate.

Nobody of Bess' generation will talk about her to Eliza and, for the first time in her life, she feels as if her community is shutting her out. Eliza's mother is neurotic, depressed and needy, which means that she has always been very close to her father. Now, as Eliza looks into the past, she discovers things about her family and her community that will change her life forever.

Stone Cove Island is the debut novel from Suzanne Myers. It is an engaging coming-of-age novel, and Eliza and Charlie are attractive central characters. The descriptions of the devastation a natural disaster causes in an isolated community are very evocative. I think this book would appeal to many teenage girls and is an enjoyable read for adults also.

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Reviewer: Carol Westron

Suzanne Myers was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Toronto, Canada. She is a graduate of Princeton University and USC Film School. Her feature film Alchemy won the SXSW Film Festival. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two sons, and two dogs. Stone Cove Island is her first novel.

Carol Westron is a successful short story writer and a Creative Writing teacher.  She is the moderator for the cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  The Terminal Velocity of Cats is the first in her Scene of Crimes novels, was published July 2013. Her second book About the Children was published in May 2014.

www.carolwestron.com