The Shark House, Sara Ackerman (Review by Carli Monostra)

As a reader, you can always feel the love Sara Ackerman has for Hawai’i directly through her writing style. She excels at tying in Polynesian culture and the island history to the story. These elements always teach me something new and make me look forward to her reading her work. In this novel, you will be transported to the Big Island with Dr. Minnow Gray, a premier great white shark expert called in to assist with the investigation of several recent incidents between a human and a potential shark. One of the cases involves an A-list celebrity which inadvertently draws even more negative attention to the series of incidents that have been happening on the beaches. Unfortunately, this prompts local officials to plan a shark hunt so that tourism does not take a hit. Minnow is now against the clock as she tries to dissuade the harmful rhetoric that sharks actively target humans while also trying to understand why these incidents are happening in the first place. She travels all over the island to survey the ocean in addition to interviewing the locals and tourists. The shark facts are delicately woven in without feeling like too much has been dumped into the plot. While the mystery behind these incidents held my attention in the beginning, the plot moved a bit too slow to maintain the momentum for me and caused the final reveal to be a bit lackluster. What did shine in this book for me was Minnow’s complicated relationship with sharks and her struggle to work through the trauma of witnessing the loss of her father as a child. The journal entries do a fantastic job at building this relationship for us and includes some beautiful scenes with sharks that truly illustrate the importance of human connection to nature. Minnow also meets a mysterious man on the island and together they try to work through their grief to fully restore the relationship they have with the ocean. I really enjoyed reading this unique storyline and appreciate that the author chose to highlight the responsibility we have with the environment we live in.