Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eARC of the book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Float comes out on February 22, 2022
Float by Kate Marchant follows Waverly, a girl from Alaska who has just flown to Florida for the summer to stay with her aunt. She’s never really fit in at her private high school in Fairbanks, and never really been accepted for who she is by her parents, so she is very much expecting things to be the same in Florida. However, as she makes friends and grows closer to the boy next door, she finds that Holden, Florida is the first place she’s ever felt like she belonged.
Everything about this book was adorable. She’s gone to a small private school all her life where the atmosphere is super competitive and where she never really had any friends, so it is easy to see where her lack of self-confidence comes from. Waverly’s self-esteem issues, anxiety, and past problems with feeling like she had no friends were definitely relatable, and seeing her confidence blossom over the course of the book is definitely rewarding. Many of her issues come from the fact that her parents are both famous climatologists and expect her to go down a similar path that she is both uninterested in and has never shown any aptitude for. My one real problem is that she doesn’t know how to swim at the start of the book, and apparently finds that embarrassing enough to admit that she endangers herself over it not once but twice in the book, and I did find her constant talking about her height (she’s almost 6 feet tall if I remember correctly) and her clumsiness to wear on me a little. Also, she had forgotten her phone in Alaska, which was just a little bit of an absurd situation that I found hard to take seriously. It would be one thing for her to have never needed a phone, but for her to have one and have just somehow forgotten it irked me a little.
The good thing about Waverly’s inability to swim and determination to hide it is that it provides a catalyst for her to get closer to Blake, since he was the only one who realized the truth. Blake is currently working as a lifeguard, and his mother died from drowning when he was little, so he’s determined to make sure that Waverly learns how to swim. Blake also has a lot of issues with his stepmother in terms of both of them misunderstanding the other, and he finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him at the start of the book, so he has a lot of issues, but at least manages to not be super angsty over it for the most part. I did genuinely like him, and he and Waverly were definitely super cute together. Blake’s super protective of her (though not in a possessive way), and the two have a lot of cute banter and I absolutely loved reading about them.
The side characters were also all dynamic and lovable. Waverly’s Aunt Rachel, an artist, is super fun and is really just trying vaguely to figure out how to be a guardian. Lena, Alissa, and Jesse, Waverly’s friends, were all fun and Alissa was especially well fleshed out. I was also genuinely interested in the relationship between Blake and his stepmother, Chloe; both are doing their best but not really getting through to each other, and I just really love that subplot.
I enjoyed the beach setting much more than I thought I would, as I personally don’t like going to the beach, so I wasn’t expecting to enjoy reading about it. The fact that I ended up loving the beach town atmosphere in this book was definitely a surprise for me. Waverly also works in a bookstore,; it doesn’t play much of a role plot-wise, but it’s still definitely a plus.
One main problem that I had was that the plot definitely felt a bit forced and rushed in some places, the timing wasn’t always super clear, and there was important information that was sometimes just skimmed over (such as completely omitting at one point Waverly actually learned how to swim), all of which made the pacing feel a little strange at times. While almost every individual part of the book was great, the way that it all fit together felt a little confusing sometimes.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I had a couple of issues where Waverly’s character and with the pacing of the book, but beyond those it is a completely adorable beach read that I completely recommend to anybody looking for a fluffy YA romance. Float comes out on February 22, 2022, and you should definitely pick up a copy if you’re in the mood for a beach read or if anything else about my review caught your attention.
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