Review: The Sea of Tranquility

The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

 

*2 Conflicting I-wanted-so-much-to-love-this-but-didnt Stars*

“We're like mysteries to one another. Maybe if I can solve him and he can solve me, we can explain each other. Maybe that's what I need. Someone to explain me.”

So many of my fellow bloggers/reviewers RAVE about this and I put off reading it, purely because of the price (£6 is very expensive when you read as much as me) but when it reduced, I jumped at the chance of reading it.

I was SO dissappointed.

I've let the book and its contents settle for a few days and finally feel able to write my review.

This book covers Nasyta, a 17 year old former Piano player who doesn't speak. She now lives with her aunt following a horrific event that plays out through the story. We are introduced to Josh - a fellow youngster who has no one, but plenty of money and a nice house.

Que my dislike to begin...

We don't know why Josh has no one or why he has lots of money, a nice car and a nice house. It is sort of explained in the book, but not really.

Josh is an OK character. I didn't hate him. That's about as much as I can say about him really. He was a bit blah.

We don't know why Nastya doesn't speak - we do know something happened to her that stops her speaking or using her left hand properly meaning she can no longer play piano. Now, I know if the love of your life [in Nastya's case - her Piano] is taken away, you would be distraught. I expected that. But what I read was bitterness, self-pity, self-lothing, anger, cowardice and no self worth.

Overall, Nastya just IRRITATED me.

I couldn't understand why she didn't speak. All I wanted to do was scream at her. Or slap her. Or shake her. I certainly didn't even like, much less love her like I should with a main character.

I didn't like the way the plot played out. It didn't flow, the few flashbacks that tried to explain why Nastya was the way she was, were difficult to understand, not in context and did little to dissolve my confusion. This is written from 2 points of view - Nastya and Josh. This element is actually OK as I like a story from the guy's point of view.

I felt a lot of the writing was very immature - I know the characters are only 17 but the story is written as though they are adults and I expect the writing to reflect this.

“Daylight won’t protect you from anything. Bad things happen all the time; they don’t wait until after dinner”

 

“Call me Sunshine again, and I will murder you, cocksucker.”

“Good Morning, Sunshine!" Josh F**king Bennett. By now, I'm pretty sure that if I were to find his birth certificate that is exactly what it would say.”

Things I liked:

Drew - He is funny, sweet, beyond stupid and just cute.

Clay - Clever, artistic, to the point and intuative. And Gay - always a plus for the funny stakes!

That's it. That is all I liked.

Expected so much from this book and it just didn't meet my expectations whatsoever - it fell so very short of them.

Wouldn't recommend this to anyone as it just wasn't for me, sorry Katja!

XxX