Julie's Review: The Sea of Tranquility

Author: Katja Millay
Series: No
Publication Date: June 4, 2013
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Length: 13 Hours 10 Minutes
Narrator: Kirby Heyborne,Candace Thaxton
Obtained: purchased
Genre:  YA
Rating: 4/5
Bottom Line: Interesting novel on how pain can cause us to re-define ourselves
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab!

Summary: 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 17 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. ~amazon.com  

Review: Sea of Tranquility is a breath of fresh air when it comes to YA for me. In the age of dystopian novels, reading a YA book about normal issues and struggles that teens encounter or could encounter. Ms. Millay starts off with the characters being sterotypes of teenagers. You have the male flirt, the brooder and the mysterious girl. Thank goodness, each of these turns out to be so much more than the stereotype.

I did wonder a few times if I would have liked this books just as much if I read it rather than listening. Frankly, the narrators were fantastic. Kirby was great as Josh and Candace nailed Nastya. There is much angst as one would expect in a YA novel but I didn't find that it grated on my nerves. Both Josh and Nastya have been hurt and disappointed in their short lives but in very different ways. It isn't that either one is trying to rescue the other one and it isn't that they necessarily need rescuing but they need each other.

What happened to Nastya is alluded to in the beginning of the book but it all slowly starts to come together until the big reveal. Josh has his own story and it doesn't take as long to reveal but it's still devastating.

Ms. Millay has a gifted way of telling a story and the way she lets everything slowly build up is brilliant. There wasn't a time when you weren't wondering what happened to make Nastya so angry. What happened to make Josh so guarded.

I am looking forward to whatever Ms. Millay writes next, in whatever genre she chooses.

Jenn's Review

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