We Run the Tides

by Vendela Vida
Review by Meredith McKinnie

“We are thirteen, almost fourteen, and these streets of Sea Cliff are ours. We walk these streets to our school perched high over the Pacific and we run these streets to the beaches, which are cold, windswept, full of fishermen and freaks. We know these wide streets and how they slope, how they curve toward the shore, and we know their houses.”

This novel took me immediately back to middle school, when I didn’t understand my body or my mind or the shifting expectations of a young woman coming of age. Thirteen-year-old Eulabee feels on top of her middle school world. Alongside her friend Maria Fabiola, the most beautiful girl in school, Eulabee is adjusting to the freedom of being a young woman and the responsibility of the adult problems that come with that freedom. When Maria Fabiola mysteriously disappears, Eulabee’s world is rocked as she becomes the outcast who doubts the severity of Maria Fabiola’s disappearance. Eulabee fumbles through the angst of a teen crush, the awkwardness of her first physical encounter with a boy, and the onset of shame from a cruel group of peers. The roller coaster of emotions is unsettling and familiar and brings back the uncertainty of adolescence, how serious it all seems in the moment and how ridiculous it all is in hindsight. 

Vendela Vida writes with a seamless wit and direct tone. She captures the discomfort of everyday interactions, forcing readers to wince alongside the characters’ misfortunes. The book is engaging and unpredictable, and one you recommend to a friend without a disclaimer – assured the reader will find her own connection. I swam frantically through this novel as if I was traversing the tidal wives depicted in the book. Vida paints a portrait of San Francisco before the onslaught of tech capitalism priced many locals out of the city. Eulabee’s struggle with adolescence is akin to the city’s struggle with change, not sure where it will land or how to move forward without losing itself or if it has any control at all. Eulabee is the smart teenager we all think we should have been, while making the same mistakes we would probably make again. While on the surface a book about middle school girls may not sound appealing, this one is much more than a coming-of-age story. Vida threads emotional turmoil, town suspense, and identity struggles in a story of the perplexing reality of a privileged youth.