The Sea of Tranquility Review

Photo Credit: Goodreads.com

Have you ever finished a book and just sat there?  

Have you ever just sat there, staring at the last couple of sentences, or the “The End” centered in the last page before the acknowledgements, and couldn’t even think about moving?  It’s a moment straight out of the stages of grief where you are unconsciously caught in the first stage: denial.  

This story cannot be over.

I think all ride or die book lovers have had one of these moments, so you might understand what I mean when I tell you about one of my very favorite books.  Although there is nothing exceptional about the book on the surface--after all, it is just the story of a “lonely” boy and a “broken” girl trying to figure out who they are alongside each other--after starting and finishing this novel several times, it is hard for me to consider the story any less than exceptional.

Katja Millay’s The Sea of Tranquility is transcendent.  

Millay’s novel tells the resurrection story of Nastya Kashnikov, a former piano prodigy and current (intentional) social outsider due to her tragic past and off-putting exterior, and Josh Bennett, a reluctantly popular boy who forms what Nastya calls a “forcefield” around him after all of his closest family members pass away.

Between the two of them (still in high school), there are heaps of baggage and mountains of secrets that keep them from connecting to the outside world, but they somehow find it possible to find each other in each other.   

It seems necessary to warn potential readers that the book is fairly slow moving, but the journey Nastya and Josh take to the last pages is important enough to warrant the drawn out story.  Life doesn’t tie up situations in sparkling red bows overnight, and neither does Katja Millay.  

It also seems fair to warn readers that the story is messy.  No, not the writing, the story. Nastya’s life was hard--is hard--and she won’t ever be totally clean from what she’s endured.  She’s one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever read because...you’ll see.

I refuse to give too much more away, because I went into the novel fairly blind and can’t imagine a more worthwhile outcome.  

If you’d like to get a little more insight into the novel from a different perspective, Maryse’s Book Blog explores The Sea of Tranquility in a fairly extensive book review that goes much more in-depth and incorporates other readers’ perspectives on the book as well. 

Please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know if you have read this and love it (or hate it) or what you think about the recommendation.  Happy reading!