Angel murdered Birdy. We learn that right as the book begins. We learn of this from Marie, the murderer's younger sister. I love when a plot starts with the what and continues on about the why and how. This was such a great, suspenseful read. I really enjoyed this one.

This is the first book that I've read by Stewart O'Nan and I look forward to exploring his backlist. This novel first struck me as a murder mystery, but it was less that and more character-driven, which I surprisingly liked. The characters seemed like people I could know: ordinary, working class., and believably flawed, I appreciated the juxtaposition of these ordinary lives with the extraordinary crime of murder and how each person was impacted by it. Also, it stood out to me that the main voice of the story is Marie, the 13 year old sister of the killer. She was neither the victim nor the killer, but her perspective seemed most critical to understanding the story and other characters somehow. She was the most likeable character, and it was heartbreaking to see how the events of the story swept her up and made a lasting impression on her, more than others, it seemed. I appreciated the opportunity to read and listen to this novel, thanks to the ARC and ALC provided by the publisher and Netgalley.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book hooked me from the very beginning. I immediately needed to hear the story of how the sister helped to murder someone. Very complex characters. The story really got to the fact that a tragedy doesn’t just impact one person in the family. Took me a little bit to get used to the writing style and to keep the characters straight.

I thought the narrator could have been a little more emotive and tried to differentiate the main characters a little more.
3.5

Left scratching my head a bit. Wondered if I missed something while reading/listening. Like skipped a part. Felt like it dragged, the big event happened and then we fast forwarded again to a conclusion that didn’t seem satisfying.

Full of teen angst, but nothing seems to happen for the longest time - I was 58% into the book and each scene was the same: the snarky comments between the two sisters, the mother dating a guy she clearly was not in love with so she could go out to dinner at expensive places, and the cheating boyfriend & the teenaged girl rivals being bitchy.
The narrator's young voice is good for this story, but the girl characters sounded so similar, I had trouble telling them apart.
None of the characters had much depth and I did not care about any of them.
I received a digital audio copy of this book from Netgalley and Dreamscape for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read Ocean State By Stewart O’Nan in exchange for my honest feedback.
Quick, easy, and to the point. This was my first O’Nan read and I loved it the drama with a worlds colliding.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of Ocean State. I was not a fan of this book, mainly because of the characters. I struggled to get through the whole thing.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Net Galley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not a fan of this book. There's not enough mystery, the characters are just angry, and I'm not interested in the story line. I didn't care for the swearing, though I know some teens do swear a lot. There aren't any twists and turns or surprises. I just couldn't get invested in this story of jealousy.

A teenaged love triangle leads to murder. The book focuses on four characters - the killer, her sister, her mother and the victim. I was really glad that this book was short, because I found all of the trysts and the dramatic angst unbearable. The characters, including the victim and the boy who was the third leg of the triangle, were unlikable. This was the most banal murder imaginable and the conclusion was incredibly flat. This is the third book I’ve read by this author and I’ve liked one out of three. I can’t believe that the same author who wrote “West of Sunset” also wrote this book and “Henry Himself”. However, I now know to be very wary before reading another of his books. I received a free copies of the ebook and audio book from the publisher. 2.5 stars

Unexpected from this author, very different from other books he has written, at least of those I have read. A book that starts off with a young teen, Marie, stating that her sister has murdered someone. From this starting point, the author, takes us into the lives of three young women and one young man. Using the voices of these two women, p!us ones mother and the young sister Marie, who is a keen observer, we learn exactly what happened and why.

A male author writing as a man could prove difficult, but I think the author nailed the lives of teenaged girls. A time where everything seems larger than life, important and dramatic. Also, as one with a slightly younger sister, the curiousness, nosiness, and insights of said sister. A mother's guilt and protectiveness. This is in my opinion, real life written as fiction The story, the lives of all these characters pulled me in and the wonderful narration enhanced the experience.

I listened to nearly half of this one and gave up on it. The plot was painfully slow and characters just weren't interesting. I just wasn't invested enough to finish it.

I found this novel about a working class family surviving a tragedy disappointingly flat. We learn in the first line of the novel that one of two sisters in a single-parent family murders another girl in her high school. So the book is not a who-dun-it but is supposed to explore how and why she did it, and sadly, we learn very little about her motivations.

The story is told in multiple points of view: we see events from the point of view of the murder victim, her killer, her little sister, and her mother. The victim and the killer are both in love with a boy who seems wholly unworthy of the passion they lavish on him. His motivations for cheating so repeatedly are neither explored nor revealed; we just know he cheats regularly on his longtime girlfriend, a popular princess of the high school, and that his affair with the less popular Birdy is just one of many. He lies when he tells the girls he loves them and seems to enjoy being punished by his longtime girlfriend. He apparently gets pleasure from playing the penitent while continuing to go behind his girlfriend's back. Ultimately, he takes his penitent-playing a bit too far when he agrees to lure the victim to her death. It is unclear why he would participate in this or, if the violence took him by surprise, why he wouldn't do anything to stop it.

Class issues are featured prominently throughout the book, but they too seem to come to nothing. The boyfriend comes from a family with a lot of money who have a giant beach house they use only seasonally. Both girls come from single-mother households and will likely never live in such homes themselves, which perhaps make their stolen moments there all the more thrilling. But their class differences don't seem to have any affect on their characters; we learn that rich or poor, they are able to be heartless killers.

Both girls are good students, hard workers, athletes, with plenty of friends and attention. Why the one girl becomes so consumed by jealousy that she first beats and then kills the other is a complete mystery to me. I think it is possibly a mystery to the girl herself, who never seems to experience any remorse.

The killer's mother drinks too much and dates too many men, often leaving her girls home alone. Their father is a schlub who sees them every other weekend. Nothing about their background as children of divorce explains why one of them is a remorseless killer.

The book went fast but left me greatly dissatisfied. And the ending (stop reading here to avoid spoilers) in which we learn that the murderer spends just a few years in prison before getting out, getting married and having a family of her own, is particularly galling and mystifying. Is this supposed to suggest that any of us could have committed a crime of passion and then gone on to lead an ordinary life? I'm not buying it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for providing me with a free audio version of this book in exchange for my honest review.

“When I was in eight grade, my sister helped kill another girl.”

“Ocean State” is based on a murder which happened in the nineties in a small river town, Haddam, Connecticut. Maryann Measles, a thirteen-year-old girl from a broken family, had moved into town and wanted to find a way into the social scene. She decided the way in was to sleep with the boys in the clique which she wanted to join. The girlfriends didn’t appreciate her desperation and convinced the boys to kill her. Four of the boys stuffed her into an oil drum and dumped it into the Connecticut River.

Set in Rhodes Island, the narrator of “Ocean State” is Marie, the killer’s younger sister. Angel is Marie’s role model. She’s beautiful, popular, athletic and confident. Everyone loves her. She is everything Marie feels she is not and may never be.

O’Nan uses the first-person narrative to warm up what turns out to be a very chilling story. The novel is about the ecstasy, misery and wildness of romantic love and what the desire for it can do to people. Desperation stems from Angel, Myles’ long-term girlfriend, that she will never be loved again like she is loved by him, before possessiveness takes over when she realizes he is being unfaithful to her with Birdie, the murder victim.

“Ocean State” is retrospective in that Marie has a story she’s had to carry her whole life. It’s as if she puts the story in front of the reader saying “help me understand this because it has changed my life and I don’t understand everything about it”. Further into the novel it becomes obvious that this is really about how we see ourselves, how we view our personal worth and whether we are worth anything if nobody loves us. These questions then lead to what we will do to be recognized, understood and known. Highly recommended.

A huge thank you to @Netgalley and Dreamscape Media LLC for this compelling advanced audiobook.

I am grateful for the opportunity to read this book. I found the similar familial structure of the two lead characters to be at times confusing. In my opinion this is more of a YR story. The coming of age theme paired with murder is interesting but almost predictable with a girl-boy-girl scenario. I would recommend it as a great summer read.

Is it really called a “who done it” when you know from the get go who the “who” is?
   Packed with the usual family dynamics and drama it’s a constant siege of descriptions from each of the characters. It’s a sad story that really didn’t catch my interest in spite of the fact I live in RI and was constantly awaiting the next location so I could put myself there. A few mispronunciations of local places brought a chuckle.  I seemed to have more attachment to the scenes than to the characters.
   I should go back and read another of his previous novels and get a new perspective on this author.

I don’t quite know how to feel about Ocean State, but I will say it was a good book. I guess I didn’t know exactly what I was expecting when I first started this book. The writing was great, and the storyline was good. I enjoyed how it was mostly told from the younger sisters point of view and her interpretation of what was happening in her young life at the time of the murder and what led up to it. The other points of view were from the 2 girls involved in the murder. Such a sad, but interesting story about unrequited love.

***thank you Netgalley for the ARC copy in return for an honest review***

I really liked this book all the way until the end. The end was kind of anti-climatic compared to the rest of the book. I was really wanting more information about the main 3 characters and more of an understanding of why/what happened to get to that ending. Liked the narrator!

I really enjoyed the audiobook version of Ocean State. The story isn't really a mystery since the reader knows immediately who was murdered and who the murderer is. The alternating perspectives are really effective in weaving the story together. This book challenges the reader to think about what they would do in similar circumstances. It's thoughtful and memorable.

This story was confusing and hard to follow. Parts were interesting enough to keep me reading but I would not recommend.

How is this for a book opening?

“When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.

This story is not a whodunit but an exploration of why the murder happened

It’s 2009, and the Oliviera family of three is moving yet again, to a long sitting empty house in Ashaway, R.I. The house is across from the Line & Twine, the town’s old, now abandoned mill. In this new arrangement Marie and her older sister, Angel now get to have their own room. Marie is not happy about it, since she idolizes everything about Angel. Angel is funny, pretty and can do spins on roller skates. She's tall with pale skin tones, like their mother. Their Mother, Carol, was a bombshell in her earlier days. On the other hand, Marie looks more like their part-Portuguese father, Frank. Frank now lives a sad and lonely life in his own little apartment. Marie describes herself as chubby and klutzy. Carol promises her daughter she’ll find her own special talent one day, but Marie is skeptical.
Marie claims her mother’s talent is finding new boyfriends and new places for them to live. Carol's taste in men does leave a lot to be desired and these men are never good for the girls. For example, her newest boyfriend, Russ, is a firefighter, is kind of old and reminds Angel of Papa Smurf. The last one, Wes, necessitated a 911 call and still isn’t entirely out of the picture.
Yet, Carol is portrayed as one who demonstrates tenderness for her girls and attentiveness at her nursing job. This spills over into the girl's life as she frets over her girl's well being. Still, she is unable to stop chasing the last vestiges of her own youth.

Almost as if in opposition to her mother’s perceived irresponsibility, Angel has been steadfastly committed to her first love who is a rich, guitar-strumming boyfriend. She and Myles Parrish have been an item for three years. When Angel goes with him on visits to his family’s summer house just up the coast, she fits right in and even helps out with the chores. For this reason, she develops a fleeting pride of ownership. However, Myles plans to go off college next year, she’s sure she’ll lose him to some rich girl and she will be forgotten. Myles does head off to college and Angel continues working at her dead end job after graduation.
As expected he meets a girl and she threatens their relationship, but she isn’t rich like Myles. Birdy Alves is a petite high school senior who works at the local D’Angelo. (a New England chain of sandwich shops) She lives with her widowed mother and is a good student. Byrdy already has a boyfriend, but all she really wants is Myles. Myles takes Byrdy alone with him to the summer house where she melts under his attention.
So Myles is now cheating on Angel with Birdy, the victim-to-be. Both girls are frustrated and obsessing over a boy who doesn’t seem worth it.
This tragedy is set in 2009 with Social media serving as the ugly vehicle leading up to the event fueled by and the truly destructive force of jealousy.

Not the best crime novel I’ve ever read, but it was good audio with a talented narrator.