From the book: Maddy is sixteen. Smart, funny, and profound, she has loyal friends, a mother with whom she’s unusually close, a father she’s never met, devoted grandparents, and a crush on a boy named Jack. Maddy also has cancer. Living in the shadow of uncertainty, she is forced to grow up fast.

All the Water in the World is the story of a family doing its best when faced with the worst. Told in the alternating voices of Maddy and her mother, Eve, the narrative moves between the family’s lake house in Pennsylvania; their home in Washington, DC; and London, where Maddy’s father, Antonio, lives. Hungry for experience, Maddy seeks out her first romantic relationship, finds solace in music and art, and tracks down her father. She continually tests the depths and limits of her closeness with her mother, while Eve has to come to terms with the daughter she only partly knows, in a world she can’t control.

The author did an excellent job of telling this story. She managed to not only get inside the head of a young girl with cancer, but also the interior life of her mother and the others around Maddy as everyone in her orbit tries on a daily basis to make some sense out of living through something seemed so profoundly unfair and unstoppable. This is a beautifully written story. ( )

Shortlisted for the COSTA First Novel Award