Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes

“Every wave in that big old blue sea is a story.” With these words, young Annie’s great-uncle finds a way to unlock some of her fears and turn them into something beautiful. But when she returns to Ansel-by-the-Sea as an adult, will she have the key she needs to unlock her adult fears and turn them to confident love and purpose?
Amanda Dykes may be a name I had never heard before, but by penning Whose Waves These Are she is rapidly garnering attention in the Christian fiction world. I predict this novel will win an award for a debut novel in 2019.
A time-slip book, the reader is tossed like the sea between young Annie as she grows up, a mature Annie of the present, and a young Robert Bliss whose twin is drafted in 1944.
Annie is a great heroine. One can’t help but root for her as she returns to look for her great-uncle. Will she grow enough to fit in and find her place in this seashore town? The pieces to this puzzle are more numerous than I expected and definitely include Annie’s parents. A story like this, told chronologically, would have been interesting. By creating a time-slip out of it, and adding the unexpected twists, Dykes produces a work nothing short of amazing!
Some favorite quotes:
The first and most important to me-

“Life is big. And God is bigger.”
“You’re a good man. Let me try to be one, too.”
“He wasn’t the oldest, but they both knew he was the one who had the fury of a nor’easter inside him, a fury he could use to fight.”
“She imagines people as combination locks, each bit of information a tick on the dial as she works to build up their story in her mind, to unlock them.”

“…if everything around you is broken, it’s time to unbreak something.”
When Annie is trying to figure out her purpose:
“‘The microbes,’ he says, ‘only have a single cell. And they use it to capture sunlight all day— their sole purpose. At night, when danger comes, …they don’t run. They don’t shrivel up or hide. They release the sunlight they’ve been storing up, right into the darkness. They fight it back by lighting up.’”
Expect a small town, big hearts, sweet romances, tragedy, and miracles. Expect a blessing in this book.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinions, which are solely my own.