WHISPERING THROUGH WATER

A young woman discovers that her difficult aunt’s past is not what she expected in this YA novel.

Gwyn Madison has been accepted to a college in Boston, much to her Aunt Delia’s chagrin. Gwyn wants to study graphic design at an art school there, but Delia won’t pay for a college far from their home in Virginia. The summer after Gwyn graduates from high school, she and Delia are at odds. Gwyn stubbornly insists that she wants to attend the Boston school and thinks Delia’s hesitancy is because she doesn’t approve of art as a career. Then she finds out that Delia used to paint, which piques Gwyn’s interest (“I tried to imagine Aunt Delia in a painting smock, with a permanent smudge on her right middle finger”). She also discovers that Delia has been receiving regular letters about someone named Andrew. Gwyn decides it’s up to her to discover Andrew’s identity. She starts snooping and uncovering clues about her aunt’s life, including a man called Adam, who wrote Delia letters from Vietnam during the war. Gwyn’s investigation leads her to a woman named Brenda, whose son, Isaac, agrees to help the amateur sleuth and later asks her out. Gwyn and Isaac have a touching summer romance as she continues to piece together clues. She quickly learns that everyone has secrets and that people’s pasts are much more complicated than they seem. In Wheeler’s novel, Gwyn’s motives are questionable; the narrative implies that she thinks she can uncover a big secret to use as leverage to get Delia to pay for the Boston college. But as Gwyn unearths the secret, she finds that it might bring her and Delia closer together instead. The author tells a sweet tale that will appeal to YA readers. While the backstory is introduced awkwardly at the beginning of the book, once the tale gains momentum, it is well written. Unfortunately, the secret involving Andrew is a bit clichéd and unsurprising. Still, Gwyn is a well-drawn character who is friendly and inquisitive, and her eventful summer after high school is a milestone a lot of readers will relate to.

An engaging, if somewhat predictable, coming-of-age tale.