LitPick Review
Casco Bay by Aja Holland is a mystery novel set off the coast of Maine. The book follows Shiloh Vail’s return to the harbor town of Casco Bay where she spent her childhood. Shiloh spent many years away from her hometown, yet the death of her father beckons her home to settle his affairs. As Shiloh goes through what her father left behind, she begins to find more questions than answers, especially regarding his lack of records from prior to his marriage to her mother. The mystery of her father’s past causes Shiloh to begin to question how well she truly knew her father and her own identity.
Opinion:
Casco Bay by Aja Holland is a well-written mystery with a storyline that reeled me in with every page I turned. I liked the way the author started the book with Shiloh on a boat heading to her childhood home of St. Aggie’s Island. It gave the book a good start, getting right into the thick of things. To me this was the perfect start as it set a nice even pace to the book that was not too slow nor too fast. I also have to say that I loved how the author described St. Aggie’s Island as it felt like she was painting a picture in my head with her words with how the island looked, and I felt like I could even picture myself there!
I also liked how the author wove in Shiloh’s memories like the fact that her dad taught her how to make coffee the "right way" when she was a child or his dislike for fancy coffee like Starbucks when he visited her at her college in Boston. These little details offered an insightful view of what her dad was like with her and a snapshot of how she grew to be who she was as a person. I liked getting to see the piece of her childhood as it made her feel more relatable to me, almost like she was a real person with a past of her own.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed the book, especially the mystery and danger that comes into play as Shiloh began to dig into her dad’s past.
