I had really really high expectations for this one and that's maybe the only negative - it didn't live up. I love novels set in Maine and thought this sounded great - I got a little twisted around in the timeline of events and thought the narrative got a little muddy.

I really enjoyed this debut novel and would recommend it to others. I liked the way the author wove the narrator's story around the Thatch family drama. I read it very quickly and will look for more by this author.

Difficult story of two boys that have known each other since they were teens. Andrew and Ed worked together on a lobster boat. After going thrown ways, Andrew is invited back into Ed’s life and great fortune. But things are not as they seem and Andrew discovers a trail of lies, and secrets.

This book gets five stars for having a strong sense of place. I felt completely immersed in Maine's Midcoast. But overall, this wasn't my favorite read. I felt it started out strong and then meandered more than I cared for.

Initially, I was invested in narrator Andrew's fascination with the Thatches, a family that has risen in the ranks to become the most powerful in their small town. Andrew has a history with Ed Thatch, a lobsterman who has an unexplainable cache of wealth, and when the police arrive at a party at the Thatches house, Andrew decides to do his own investigation for a book. Andrew's interest turns into retellings of his conversations with members of the family and others adjacent to them, so that it becomes a survey of each Thatch as well as an examination of how they ended up with the cops on their doorstep.

Where the book failed to grip me was that the story didn't push far enough into the thoughtful territory OR the mystery/thriller territory. I would have enjoyed both or one or the other, but it felt like it hung in the middle, never committing to either.

There's always a reason I pick a particular book to read next. In the case of "The Midcoast" what caught my attention was the setting. I have childhood memories of summer vacations near Damariscotta. It didn't hurt that The Washington Post noted that "The Midcoast" was one of the most anticipated books of 2022. The evocative cover didn't hurt either.

FIRST SENTENCE: "Back when I lived out of state, people always used to get excited when they found out where I was from."

QUOTE: "I don't know, but maybe, or definitely, it has something to do with storytelling. When we narrate the past, it helps to place ourselves as close as possible to the center of the action. But the problem is: The vast majority of humans, or maybe just well-to-do Americans, never get all that close to the center of anything."

THE STORY: Andrew grew up with the goal of escaping his small seaside town. Eventually he returned with his family and was surprised to find his former boss, a lobsterman, Ed Thatch and his family newly wealthy and powerful. Andrew starts watching and listening to figure out how this unexpected change in people he knew growing up had happened.

WHAT I THOUGHT: "The Midcoast", Adam White's debut novel, is a sobering account of life choices with lots to think about. The author has done an excellent job of describing the setting, dialect, and prevailing class distinctions as well as exploring the curiosity we have about other people's lives and hopefully reconciliation with our own existence.

BOTTOM LINE: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

DISCLAIMER: I received a free e-copy of "The Midcoast" by Adam White from NetGalley/Random House Publishing Group - Random House Hogarth for my honest review.

The Midcoast is set in Maine where a lobster fisherman rises to wealth, yet something isn’t quite right. A native from the town, Andy, who is familiar with the Thatch family starts writing a book on the family.
I loved the summer setting in this book and really enjoyed the story of the Thatch’s. I don't know if it was the way Andy’s part in this story was written or that I just never really cared about Andy? The Thatch’s were so interesting that I just didn't get why descriptions of Andy and his family and his way of thinking mattered. There were about 2 pages towards the end that I skimmed over because it was about Andy and I wanted to find out what happened with the Thatch’s!!! I really was sad with how the book ended, because I ended up caring for some of the characters. It was a perfect story of how wealth and fame might not be worth trying to attain.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because of the Thatch story
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this arc in return for my honest opinion.

This is the kind of story I love to get my hands on: it grabs me, the people become real, and it doesn’t let me go until I’ve run out of pages.
We travel to Damariscotta Maine, a beautiful seaside village where the caste system is alive and well. A recently returned native, Andrew, is amazed to see that Ed and Steph Thatch, in defiance of their lower echelon youth have now grown and are fully flourishing in the upper echelons of society. How was this possible, and what makes them tick?
Adam White takes us between past and present as we learn about Ed and his undying love for Steph. It started with a simple braided bracelet and took off from there. Whatever he thought she wanted, he provided, no matter the cost. And she gave him the love, devotion, and family he had always wanted and never had in his youth. This is a beautiful love story, but with a sad twist. I can easily see this becoming a movie. I just hope the actors can bring the characters to painful life as well as Adam’s words have.
Sincere thanks to Henry Holt & Company for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book is now available.

The Midcoast by Adam White is a mystery, a crime drama and a family saga all rolled into one. It takes the reader along in such a way that you feel like a voyeur, observing the personal lives of strangers that you wish you knew. The Midcoast is in Maine and the state is beautifully depicted here. The characters in Damariscotta are realistically drawn New Englanders, surely due to the fact that the author grew up in the very same town. This is the story of the Thatch family: Ed, Steph and their two children and the story is narrated by Andrew who is from Maine and is observing and writing about the mystery of how Ed Thatch, who used to be a humble lobsterman, has achieved wealth and popularity during the time that Andrew was away from Damariscotta. The rest of the novel you must read for yourself. The story moves moves along at an unpredictable pace and will have the reader second-guessing throughout. The Midcoast is Adam White’s first novel and that comes as a surprise. The book reads like it was written by someone with many novels already in his writing career. Hopefully, there will be many more to come. If you are looking for a book that is different from many, this novel would be a great choice. Highly recommended. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group, NetGalley and the author for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Great read! Really well developed story and captures Maine - the real Maine. It's part mystery, part family drama, and so much more. I look forward to White's next novel - this one was more than I had hope for!

Published by Hogarth on June 7, 2022

The Midcoast is a crime novel in the sense that crime provides the drama that holds the plot together. It would be more accurate to say that crime is the backdrop for a character-driven novel. The Midcoast follows family members who come to realize that the family’s prosperity has its origin in burglary. The family leader’s transition from lobsterman to criminal seems natural and inevitable, given his single-minded fixation on keeping a promise to give his wife whatever she wants.

Andrew, the novel’s narrator, grew up in Damariscotta, a town on the midcoast of Maine. When Andrew was 15, Andrew’s father (an orthopedic surgeon), reaching for a cure for Andrew’s lazy approach to life, arranged for Andrew to take a job as a dockhand at the Thatch Lobster Pound. Ed Thatch was slightly older than Andrew. They had little in common, given Andrew’s plan to play lacrosse and get an education while Ed intends to follow his father’s path as a lobsterman. Ed and Andrew are both impressed by a girl from New Hampshire named Steph, who doesn’t seem impressed by either of them. Later in life, when Andrew moves back to Damariscotta, he learns that Steph has married Ed, a marriage Andrew’s negligence might have inadvertently furthered.

Andrew narrates the Thatch family’s story based on equal parts of research and speculation. Ed begins his criminal career by making an impulsive decision to burglarize a small yacht, not realizing that the victim will one day be his friend. He steals an expensive ring that will be transformed into his wife’s engagement ring. Ed then builds a life by casing vacation houses from his lobster boat and burglarizing them when they appear to be empty. He uses the proceeds to buy land and make other investments that turn him into Damariscotta’s wealthiest resident. He later uses his new fleet of souped-up lobster boats to smuggle marijuana from Canada.

Ed and Steph have two kids, EJ and Allie. EJ comes to suspect the true nature of his father’s work before he begins a career in law enforcement — a career that advances the family business. Steph is clueless about Ed’s criminality, or at least she prefers to be. Steph is ambitious. She becomes town manager, pursuing the belief that Damariscotta can become a prosperous tourist destination. The town does not share her ambitions. Its people prefer anonymity to prosperity. They like Damariscotta the way it is, the way it has always been. Steph ignores them and plugs away at her ambitions, too busy to wonder how Ed is earning so much money. When EJ forces her to ask those questions, the questions “followed her everywhere, exhausted her, made her disappointed in everything she saw.”

Allie is the most innocent member of the family and one of the most carefully developed characters. Ed frets about where Allie can get the best education while pursuing her interest in lacrosse — an interest that brings Andrew back into Ed’s life. Ed also befriends a wealthy man whose daughter is a lacrosse player and who supports Allie’s decision to attend Amherst. The reader learns about Allie’s feeling of guilt about Amherst tuition and her sense that she doesn’t belong — which, if “belonging” means being the child of rich parents who themselves went to a college like Amherst, is true.

It might be easy to sympathize with Ed, an uncomplicated man who followed a path that allowed him to keep a promise to his wife without giving it much thought. With the same lack of planning, he will resolve to abandon crime, again because he wants to make Steph happy, but also because he has a dim realization that crime makes communities unsafe for Allie. Ed is steady but he isn’t blessed with the ability to appreciate potential consequences.

Adam White draws detailed pictures of Maine communities that lack charm but resist modernization. He explores the contrast between upper and lower classes in the Northeast without engaging in a political discussion. Characters from all walks of life populate the novel’s background, sometimes interacting because of shared interests (lacrosse, for example), usually minding their own business.

Although crime drives Ed’s success until it doesn’t, The Midcoast is not built on the typical plot of a crime novel. Apart from being Ed’s part-time occupation, crime is only important to the extent that it has an impact on the characters. Crime drives the novel’s violent climax, but the violence is understated. It does not exist to titillate or shock, but to motivate the next unwritten chapter in the lives of the Thatch family.

That act of violence is previewed early in the novel, prompting Andrew’s exploration of the Thatch family. The violence is given a focused explanation by the novel’s end. At that point, Andrew is teaching writing. Andrew tells his students that writers need to find a way to connect readers with their story. The characters in The Midcoast are sufficiently varied that I suspect most readers will connect with one of them. More ambitious readers might identify with Steph; younger readers with Allie. Some people might connect to the relationship between Ed and Steph, two people who seem horribly mismatched but who, by the novel’s end, would not know how to live without each other. Maybe readers will connect with Maine or with crime. I can envision many connections that would make readers appreciate the time they give to The Midcoast.

RECOMMENDED

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I LOVED the setting for this book--small town Maine. I've always wanted to visit Maine, but haven't gotten the chance to yet. I felt like I was right there while reading this book. I really enjoyed reading about the Thatch family. The plot was definitely complex. I couldn't put this one down!! This story was gripping and I would say reads more like crime fiction then a true thriller. I highly recommend adding this one to your TBR!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The premise of the book drew me in but once I started reading it, I just couldn’t get into it at all.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

This is a sad, but realist story of how a young lobsterman seeks to build his fortune and provide for his family, but in the end, no crime goes unpunished. Adam White writes a good story from the perspective of Andrew, a high school English teach in the small town of Damariscotta, who is investigating the fall of the Thatch family. The Midcoast is a great summer read.

This was a good story, though the way the story was told at times I was a bit confused on who was telling the story, for example, one person would be relating their thoughts on someone, and that someone would take over the narrative in mid flow, a good story, I enjoyed it. Andrew and his family have moved back to a small town in Maine, at a function for a women's lacrosse team thrown by the father, Ed Thatch a friend of sorts to Andrew, he comes across a police file that includes gruesome pictures of a burned out car and bodies. Andrew is taken aback at how wealthy Ed is, fishing for lobster is not that lucrative. So Andrew decides to 'investigate' Ed and his family to find out where the wealth came from. Ed's wife, Steff, is the town manager and was a high school crush of Andrew's. This isn't really a mystery or a thriller type of book, it's slow at times, the characters take time to develop and their intentions eventually come to light. Ed is heavily involved in drug trafficking, until he's not, the abrupt end causes issues that are not easily resolved and result in a tragic ending. I really did enjoy this story and the characters, particularly Ed and his son EJ, stayed with me, I would highly recommend. Thank you to #Netgalley and #Hogarth Press for the ARC.

An interesting, quiet story - very character driven. It took me awhile to get into, but overall I liked it. If you liked small-town stories. I would definitely check this one out.

In Midcoast, Andrew moves back to his sleepy Maine hometown to become an English teacher and discovers his old acquaintance’s rise to riches may not be what it seems. This isn’t so much a suspense story as it is a focus on character and how things are not always black and white. The reader follows Andrew as his weaves the story together through flashbacks and town gossip. This was a solid and compelling debut from Adam White and I look forward to his next one. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book!

The Midcoast is not a thriller, but rather a story of ambitions gone wrong for perhaps initial good intentions. Ed Thatch is a lobsterman in Damariscotta, Maine. When he meets and marries Steph, he wants to give her everything. Unfortunately, those wants and desires lead Ed to enter a world of corruption that ends up causing pain to a host of people. When an old acquaintance comes to town, he wonders about Ed’s life style changes and when everything is revealed, decides to write a book about the events. This book was well written, but jumped around a bit and was rather drawn out. There were parts of the story I found quite compelling, but overall it was a sad and bleak story.

I’m afraid the hype didn’t live up to my expectations for this title. A work that is definitely by a new author and one that needed some good editing. It seems the newest literary device is telling the reader what happened and then taking you on a trip to get to the actual event and perhaps outcomes. Once I got three quarters done I stopped for a while and finally finished the book. Poorly drawn characters, a smug storyteller, and an attempt to tell what was known but fell flat to me.

Adam White, you had me at Maine! The setting was one of my very favorite places and the author did an awesome job of really bringing it home to this Texas girl. Now about the story... hard to believe this is a debut. I mistakenly expected a thriller and this was not really it. It is more of a well done character study. There is some suspense, but overall it is about families and what they will do to survive in the way that they feel they deserve. Narrated by Andrew, he brings his family back to his hometown where he reconnects with Ed and Steph from High School. Ed and Steph are now wealthy and powerful and things do not add up. What follows is a well-written story that you need to pay attention to. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to more from this author. Hopefully set in Maine....?

Thank you to #NetGalley, #AdamWhite and #RandomHousePublishingGroup for this ARC. I willingly read and reviewed this copy and all opinions are my own.

They say that when your write your first novel, you should write ‘what you know‘. It is very obvious that Adam White is familiar with his setting and his characters because his writing is so authentic. The narrator in the story is an English teacher who coaches lacrosse and is writing a novel. All of which can be said for the author.

The cadence of this novel was discomforting. As I turned the pages, I came to know these characters better, but although there was no dramatic event for most of the book, you felt one coming. An unsettling feeling that things would come to a head and that someone was going to get hurt.

The book shows the detrimental effect that all-consuming love can have on a family. Ed Thatch wanted it all – not for himself, but for his wife Steph. A lobsterman and a high-school dropout, he always felt she was too good for him. In order to keep her, he felt he had to give her everything she ever wanted, everything he thought she deserved. The only thing was, he never asked her what that was, he assumed…

The novel speaks to the phrase “a big fish in a small pond“. The Thatch family were definitely the big fish in their Maine town. How they got that way is the crux of the book.

“the kind of quiet you were only supposed to hear in outer space”.

The writing was skilled, as can be expected from a man who teaches writing. I was impressed by this debut novel and have great expectations for his writing career. The somewhat ambiguous ending worked well here. “The Midcoast” was an accomplished debut literary novel that I can readily recommend.