Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

by: Ivy Pochoda
published by:  Ecco Books
publish date:  July 9, 2013

Summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a blue collar neighborhood where hipster gourmet supermarkets push against tired housing projects, and the East River opens into the bay. Bored and listless, fifteen-year-old June and Val are looking for some fun. Forget the boys, the bottles, the coded whistles. Val wants to do something wild and a little crazy: take a raft out onto the bay.  But out on the water, as the bright light of day gives way to darkness, the girls disappear. Only Val will survive, washed ashore semi-conscious in the weeds.

On a stifling hot Summer night Val convinces June to take a pink blowup raft out on the East River for an adventure.  While the girls think they're alone, there are eyes upon them, envying them for their bold attempts to break free of the monotony of the Red Hook lifestyle.  When Val is washed up on shore the next morning and June isn't found, the lives of many Red Hook residents will be forever changed before the Summer is over.

This book was pretty interesting.  It was written about a part of New York that I don't normally read about and it was enlightening to get a different perspective.  I was kind of surprised at how much the book revolved around other characters versus June and Val.  It spent a lot of time telling the story of Val's teacher who rescued her and their relationship and Cree a friend of Val's and his struggle to get over his father's murder.  All this eventually got tied together and it made sense, but it was an unusual balance in my opinion.

Overall, I liked this book.  The characters were people you would want to read about and diverse.  The setting was something different.  So I would recommend this book to the adult readers.  The New Adult readers might like it as well consider most of the characters are young.