The Floating Girls by Lo Patrick

The Floating Girls is stunning southern fiction, a wonderfully atmospheric coming-of-age family drama told from the perspective of a feisty 12-year-old girl―reminiscent of a modern-day Scout Finch―as she unravels the secrets that threaten her entire family.

Kay thought she knew everything there was to know about her family and their marsh life. But that was before the new neighbors arrived and her parents became suspects in a murder and a kidnapping.

One hot, sticky summer in Bledsoe, Georgia, twelve-year-old Kay Whitaker stumbles across a stilt house in a neighboring marsh and upon Andy Webber, a boy about her age. He and his father have recently moved back to Georgia from California, and rumors of the suspicious drowning death of Andy's mother years earlier have chased them there and back.

Kay is fascinated and enamored with Andy, and she doesn't listen when her father tells her to stay away from the Webbers. But when Kay's sister goes missing, the mystery of Mrs. Webber's death―and Kay's parents' potential role in it―comes to light. Kay and her brothers must navigate the layers of secrets that emerge in the course of the investigation as their family, and the world as they knew it, unravels around them.

At once wickedly funny and heartbreaking, it is an immersive coming-of-age story narrated by a feisty, smart, yet undeniably vulnerable girl reminiscent of a modern-day Scout Finch―a character who will live in readers' hearts for a long time to come.