Drawing the Ocean tends to be a book of character extremes: the bookish loner is extreme in his anti-everything; Sadie’s mom is extreme in her not-handling of their family tragedy; the handsome athlete is both truly hunky and truly good. Even the coolest girl in school vacillates from extremes, making Sadie seem the only "normal" person in the book, while she sees herself as the most freakish.

As Sadie navigates the treacherous waters of any new school, she begins to see that normal isn’t quite all she hoped for or assumed. The overall mood of the novel is a kind of soft-edged sadness as Sadie begins to emerge from her own guilt and mourning over the past to truly see the present. Through Sadie’s artistic fascination with the way things look, we join her in her exploration. MacCullough’s unusual present-tense prose is spare but compelling. Even in their extremes, the characters manage to make us believe in them. And the story ends with hope, as all life should.