Ferris Beach

by Jill McCorkle

Book Overview

"An amazing novel."-- Sarah Dessen Ferris Beach is a place where excitement and magic coexist. Or so Mary Katherine "Katie" Burns, the only child of middle-aged Fred and Cleva Burns, believes. Shy and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565129318
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 4.5"

Customer Reviews

A book worth reading

Reviewer- Ashley from Franklin, TN nited States This book focuses on the life of a girl in Southern North Carolina. Her mother, a well-cultured woman from Boston, tries to make the girl Kate have the kind of lifestyle that she had. Her father, a layed-back easy-going man, lets Kate choose whichever lifestyle she wishes to have. This book is full of pain and sadness; heartache and happiness. I recommend this book to teenagers, as a teenager, I feel I can relate to it and hope that others who read this book will also like it and relate to it.

WONDERFUL!!!!

This is definatly one of my favorite books!!! VERY well written and fun to read!!! It touched my life, made me think. I love this book, and that's all there is to tell.

This is one of those books you re-read all the time!!

The first time I read this book I was still young, but I loved it. The way Jill McCorkle potrays each character so realisticly is amazing and wonderful at the same time. This is my tenth time reading it and each time I read it it gets better and better. I recommened this book to anyone who loves realistic fiction storys that make you feel like you see the characters to the supermarket tomarrow. I was touched the way I could relate to the main character (Kate). Please take time to read this book.

The Best Book I've Ever Read

I thought this book was the best! I loved all of the mystery that Kate and Misty dwelled upon through out the book. Merle sounded like such a sweet boy. Misty's older brother and Kate sounded so cute together. When tragedy strikes in Misty's family everyone in the whole plot is effected. Angela sounded nice sometimes, but then turned around and became a real annoying jerk. Angela had a lot of problems. Misty was my favorite character because she reminds me of someone who is the ultimate human being in my estimation. She was spunky and loud. Cheerful, and sad. She knew how to deal with her life. THIS WAS AN AWESOME BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!

Physical beauty is an important issue for teenage Kate.

Kate and Misty are best friends who are on the fringes of their school's social arena, but there is no feeling that they stick together only because they can't find anyone else. They are true best friends who enjoy each other's company.Kate has a large red birthmark on her face that she is extremely self-conscious and shy about. There is a mystery about Kate's beautiful cousin Angela, that never really gets resolved. Angela's mother died while giving birth to Angela, and Kate's father Fred (who is Angela's uncle) and his mother raised Angela. Angela's mother never said who the father was. (One of the other readers thought it might have been Fred himself, whis is an intriguing thought and made me go back and read the book with a new eye.)Angela is the right age to be Kate's mother if she'd have had her at age seventeen, which causes much speculation and yearning on the part of Kate, who feels stifled by her much older and old-fashioned mother. It always seemed to me that Fred was in love with Angela, who is young and beautiful. Certain his plain, dowdy wife Cleva seems to be jealous and insecure when Angela is around. Kate yearns to be as beautiful as Angela. Misty's mother is a great beauty. Much of the story seems to center on Kate's yearning for physical beauty and the lives of those who both have it and lack it, but eventually Kate learns a more balanced view of this. The beautiful women seem to have as hard a time with their love relationships as the plainer ones do.This story takes place in the South in the 1970s, when there was a huge gap between the old ways and the new. Bigotry is touched on in several places.