Review: The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

Posted December 11, 2012 by Lola in Contemporary, Review, Romance / 12 Comments

review1
This is the first review on my blog. I love writing reviews, so you probably are going to be seeing a lot of reviews on this blog. I usually read a book in 2 or 3 days if I am lucky. Or even faster when the book is really short or I have too much free time. I read a book in 4 or 5 days when I am more busy. I always try to write my reviews spoiler free, because I hate to read spoilers myself before I have read the book.
cover of sea of tranquility by Katja MilayThe Sea of Tranquility
by Katja Millay

Blurb from Goodreads: 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.

Full of rage and without a purpose, former pianist Nastya Kashnikov wants two things: to get through high school without anyone discovering her past and to make the boy who took everything from her pay.

All 17 year-old Josh Bennett wants is to build furniture and be left alone, and everyone allows it because it’s easier to pretend he doesn’t exist. When your name is synonymous with death, everyone tends to give you your space.

Everyone except Nastya, a hot mess of a girl who starts showing up and won’t go away until she’s insinuated herself into every aspect of his life. The more he gets to know her, the more of a mystery she becomes. As their relationship intensifies and the unanswered questions begin to pile up, he starts to wonder if he may ever learn the secrets she’s been hiding or if he even wants to.

The Sea of Tranquility is a slow-building, character-driven romance about a lonely boy, an emotionally fragile girl, and the miracle of second chances.

Please Note: This book contains mature content including profanity, drug/alcohol use, and sexual situations/language.

My Review:
I bought this book immediately after I read a 5 star review by a friend of mine on goodreads, he usually doens’t like YA, but he loved this book. I knew then that I had to read and bought it even though I am supposed to be on a book buying ban. The book didn’t dissapoint, but I did had high expectations and I think that maybe I had it enjoyed it a bit more if I didn’t.

The story is slow paced, but I don’t mean this in a negative way. The pacing fits the story perfectly, but compared to other books the pacing is slow. The story is well toldm the writing style is great and there is much build-up for everything. No insta love, no almost insta love, but slow build up. Both of the main characters have their secrets, but it takes almost to the end of the book to understand it all. I liked the slow pace for a change and I liked the absence of insta love.

So bit by bit we learn more about everything. Parts of secrest are revealed, although sometimes in a strange way. Sometimes a chapter starts and we get a bit of explanation before the real chapter starts. This did happen a bit too often for me and I would’ve liked it more if more explanation was fit into the story instead of just randomly at the start of the chapter, but that’s my opinion.

The characters are awesome and I think the characters are one of the best things about this book. Even though we don’t know all the secrets from the start we do know much about the characters pretty soon already. Also the book is told from 2 point of views, but where normally you still don’t get a good sense of more than these two main characters this book really let’s you get to know other characters too. Some side characters feel just as real as the main characters and about the side characters that don’t feel that real you still get to know enough information to get a good sense of who they are. I loved getting to know the characters and the fact that even the side characters have a story.

I loved this book and it was written very well, it has that kind of writing style that after reading a huge chunk of this book you start thinking like the way the book is written (or maybe that’s just me, this does happen sometimes when I am reading a book). Another thing that I would like to say about the story is that even though I loved where most of the story went, there was also one moment (maybe two) that I got really annoyed at the book and what happened, I am not going to explain more because I am afraid of spoiling the story. The end of the book is really well done, it is very emotional and you finally get most of the pieces to understand all what happened.

To conclude: I really enjoyed this book, the story is slow paced, but the pace perfectly fits the story. The best thing about this book are the characters, they feel so real and I even got to know enough of the side character to get a good idea of who they are. If you like YA or books that focus on the characters then I would certainly recommend it to you.

Photobucket
So have you read this book? what did you think of it? You can also post the link to your review, I would love to read it! Or if you haven’t read this yet, do you plan on reading it?

Tags:


12 responses to “Review: The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

  1. I haven’t read this one, though I’ve been curious because of seeing it about a lot. Nice review. And congrats on popping your review blog review cherry. 😀

    • I am indeed seeing this book around a lot lately. It also has a new cover and some while ago I also noticed you could get it from NetGalley. It really is a good YA book, although you do have the like the slow pace.

  2. Hello, Lolita!
    I was your constant reader over at K-books. Glad you are branching out and enjoying your own blog.
    I have not read this book, and I think that I have seen another cover of this, which was much more fitting to the story. This one is very nice, too. I love the idea of a character-driven story, this is very rare these days. I love it when you can connect with the characters in a book that much, it’s just like Jacqulyn Mitchard’s What We Saw At Night.
    GREAT review
    Your reader,
    Soma
    http://insomnia-of-books.blogspot.com/

  3. Hi Soma, Thanks for following me to my new blog! There is indeed another cover for this book, I think that is the newest cover. I also really like this cover, it refers to something that happens in the book. But the new cover is really nice too and matches the book too. I had this cover on my e-reader, so I went with this picture for my review. I love the character-driven story in this book!

  4. A wonderful review Lola! I read this book last week and loved every moment of it (I even cancelled lunch plans with friends to get it finished).

    The story and characters were fab!

    Thank you for sharing 🙂 I’m a new follower.

    • Luckily I had enough free time to read it without cancelling plans, but I did find myself sitting in the bus and having no idea how long I was sitting there, lol, luckily I didn’t miss my stop.

      I am already following your blog Sharon :). I really like your blog with all the happy colours.

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.