BOOK REVIEW: At The Water's Edge by Sara Gruen

This is a book review for At The Water's Edge by Sara Gruen. I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Madeline Hyde, a young socialite from Philadelphia, reluctantly follows her husband and their best friend to the tiny village of Drumnadrochit in search of a mythical monster—at the same time that a very real monster, Hitler, wages war against the Allied Forces. What Maddie discovers—about the larger world and about herself—through the unlikely friendships she develops with the villagers, opens her eyes not only to the dark forces that exist around her but to the beauty and surprising possibilities.

There were several things I liked about this book. I loved the prologue. The book starts in 1942 when a young woman loses her baby. A few days later, she receives word that her husband died in the war. The prologue ends with the young woman walking into the Loch and killing herself. Chapter One begins Madeline's story and takes place three years later. I was a bit confused as to what the prologue had to do with Madeline's story. It took me a bit to connect with Madeline. At first, I kind of hated both Madeline and her husband, Ellis. They were spoiled and entitled. Ellis's parents were rich and they lived with them. As far as I could tell, neither one of them had any skills or any plans to work at all. I know that back then, the women rarely worked anyway. But even Ellis didn't have any job prospects. His parents gave them an allowance, for crying out loud. They spent all their time drinking and partying. It was all very frivolous and silly. After a party where Maddy and Ellis get quite drunk and humiliate themselves, Ellis gets in a huge fight with his parents and they kick him out. It is at this point that Maddy, Ellis, and their best friend, Hank, decide to go to the Scottish Highlands in search of the Loch Ness monster. 

Another reason why I loved this book was the setting of Scotland. I loved Sara Gruen's descriptions. She made the Highlands seem both beautiful and desolate. I loved the castles and the lakes and the small town village. I actually liked the people who worked at the small inn and lived at the village more than I liked Maddy, Ellis and Hank. Despite the premise and their desire to find this monster, that search actually turned out to be a secondary plot to Maddy's character development. Ellis spent most of this time searching for this monster with Hank, leaving Maddy at the inn alone. It isn't until about halfway through the book that the connection between the prologue and Maddy's story becomes clearer. It is at this point that I also started feeling somewhat more connected to Maddy and I actually started liking her. I did think the author would insert random war statistics in the story that didn't make a lot of sense or have anything to do with the story. There were a few air raids in the book and there was a lot of talk about food rationing, but other than that, they seemed pretty far removed from the war. I also thought the ending was wrapped up a bit too neatly for my taste. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Borrow. It took me a while for me to connect with the main characters, but it was still an enjoyable read.