Trigger warnings: Death of a mother, grief and loss depiction

6/10, now that I look back I enjoyed this one at first however I lost that feeling over time and in the end I felt that it wasn't worth reading and even now I highly doubt that I would do that due to the glaring flaws in this, where do I even begin. It starts immediately with a rather traumatic scene as only a few pages in the mother of the main character Sam dies and he spends the first part of the book grieving for her and I almost didn't realise that this was set in the 1990s other than the date at the start and the slang and culture of the time like surfing and the Nintendo 64. He tries to pass the time by doing what he does best: surfing and it was established from the beginning that he is rather good at it, sometimes he surfs alone and other times with another person but even that I've seen before in other books I've read before this. Eventually he goes off to his aunt's house with his cousins and I'm not sure why his mother cut herself off from Sam's aunt, I don't really know since it wasn't explained but anyways after that the book just dragged its plot and petered out in the end. ( )

4 stars, I really enjoyed this short book. The writing was so realistic and the teenagers were portrayed as teenagers, they felt real, most teenagers written appear to be from what the Author thinks they behave like, this one wasn't and for that I am grateful. ( )

teen boy mother dies, adjusting to life ( )