The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay
Genre: NA Fiction
Blurb (on back of book):
I live in a world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shapeshifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck. I am pressed so hard against the earth by the weight of reality that some days I wonder how I am still able to lift my feet to walk.
Former piano prodigy Nastya Kashnikov wants two things: to get through high school without anyone learning about her past and to make the boy who took everything from her—her identity, her spirit, her will to live—pay.
Josh Bennett’s story is no secret: every person he loves has been taken from his life until, at seventeen years old, there is no one left. Now all he wants is be left alone and people allow it because when your name is synonymous with death, everyone tends to give you your space.
Everyone except Nastya, the mysterious new girl at school who starts showing up and won’t go away until she’s insinuated herself into every aspect of his life. But the more he gets to know her, the more of an enigma she becomes. As their relationship intensifies and the unanswered questions begin to pile up, he starts to wonder if he will ever learn the secrets she’s been hiding—or if he even wants to.
The Sea of Tranquility is a rich, intense, and brilliantly imagined story about a lonely boy, an emotionally fragile girl, and the miracle of second chances.
MY OPINION: ******
This just might be my new favorite book.
I cannot believe how much I ended up loving this book. I thought it took off at a slow start but as I gradually read further, it just kept getting better. Everything about it was entertaining, emotional, beautiful: the writing, the characters, the setting, the plot, the background, etc.
I really wish that there was a sequel because that would be the number one book on my to-read list!
This is going to end up being a really short review because to be completely honest, this book rendered me speechless.
The writing. It was detailed, descriptive, sensory, and elaborate but it didn't
bore me which is a fact that I generally find true when I read deep stories. It was lengthy but all of it made sense and flowed and was actually interesting and made me just want to keep reading more and more. This was a much longer book than I expected it to be and the fact that it took me about two weeks to finish it is astounding but it was SO good. I loved the description: I could really envision everything that Katja Millay was trying to convey. I loved the dialogue: it was realistic and I could see all of the inflections and ways that the characters said what they were saying.
The characters. I loved all of them, each and every one, despite their various flaws and problems and complete utter lack of perfection.
Nastya/Emilia/Sunshine was such a broken character. Her whole existence was complex. We know that something happened in her past that made her the "way that she is" now but we don't know exactly what until later on in the story. We know that there was a boy who killed her and she's determined to find him. She stopped talking for a year (maybe it was longer?) and she refused to speak to anyone; not her family, not her friends, not her teachers. She decides to go back to school and start a new her as a "Russian whore" (meaning that she dresses differently and wears different makeup and acts differently from who she was before). I loved her character through and through and I could really understand the full complexities of who she was.
JOSH. What can I even say about him? We have here another broken character, only his is for a slightly different reason. Emilia is broken because she died; Josh is broken because everyone around him died. His father, his mother, his sister, his grandma, his grandpa, and everyone else that he loved. I loved Josh for who he was because through it all, he was strong. He was also kind and loyal and brave and he refused to let his own feelings shine through for the sake of protecting the girl he loved. He was so COMPLEX and BEAUTIFUL and GORGEOUS that I couldn't help but understand every single little thing he was going through even if what happened to him hasn't happened quite the same way to me. His nickname for Emilia was downright genius and hilarious and personal.
DREW. He was so much more than I thought he would be. I played him off as being a typical man-whore that you find in modern books these days. He seemed to be basic and not so 3-D. But as the book went on we start to see the deeper parts of his personality. He cares about people, we know that he loves someone, he feels guilty because of his past mistakes. We know that Drew is not as uncaring as you would think and he stands up for the people he cares about.
Those three are the only characters I want to talk about though I know that I've forgotten about a choice few.
The whole premise of this book set off a "mystery" air and I don't even know what genre I would put this in. It wasn't necessarily any one genre. It was a mix of things that I ended up absolutely loving the combination of.
I would recommend this book to all deeper readers who are looking for a beautiful book about broken characters finding salvation.
Main Character: Emilia, Josh
Sidekick(s): Drew, Clay, Sarah, etc
Villain(s): Aidan, misunderstanding, revenge, death, etc
Fiction Elements: This book was not based on real life events or facts.
Comments
Post a Comment