Review: The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

The Sea of Tranquility

By Katja Millay

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fav Quote:

“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.”

There are times that you are given something, something that wraps you up, finds its way to your heart and then either breaks it or strengthens it. That's what The Sea of Tranquility is like. This book broke my heart...

Nastya is a 17-year-old girl former piano prodigy whose story will change the way you see life. Her story is not a typical one. It unrolls throughout the book. Although we get to see her through memories and some facts the author chooses to provide us with, we never truly see her for what she is beneath the mask until the end. But even though we don't know her story, we still bond with her and the other characters.

"At the age when most kids are trying to figure out who they are I was busying trying to figure out why I was. I didn’t belong in this world anymore. It’s not that I wanted to be dead, I just felt like I should be. Which is why it’s hard when everyone expects you to be grateful simply because you’re not.” 

Nastya believes that her life might as well be over after being "alienated " from the world that helped her find out who she is, the world that showed her that she belongs. She can't dream of a future when she's captive of her past. Something in that past holds her back and kills her little by little everyday. She can't let people come close with her, not even those that love her the most. She's in a constant battle with herself, trying to bury a past that cannot and should not be buried. No one understands her beacause no one realy knows her. And how could they???

“So I wrote. I spit every detail out of my head and onto paper so that the memory wouldn’t have any hold over me. I felt like a criminal. Like I was perpetrating some crime by not telling, and every night I was waiting for the nightmares to call me on it, to turn me in. So I took away their leverage. I confessed myself. Every night into the notebooks. The words were the sacrifice I offered up daily in exchange for dreamless sleep. They have never failed me.”

She may hate surprises but that is UNTIL HIM.

Josh is just like Nastya. He's a boy who should have not had the life he leads but cannot do otherwise. Life is unfair and he knows it. Josh has so many scars, not on the outside but in the inside, but he hides them well. They are drawn to each other. They are friends but they both know that that's just a pretense, they both feel something deeper. They are two young people that carry too much, never being able to be themselves and to trust. But what they thought was impossible it's slowly become real. They trust each other, they create a world that no one but them make the rules. That no one can enter, no one that can get past them and steal what's left of them!

This is a test that they are both ready to pass. Or so they think...

“I just wanted one person who would look at me and not want to see someone else.”

Trust is hard to gain but easy to lose. The Sea of Tranquility is such a moving book. It's very emotional and touching. There is a nice flow, things occure when it's time to happen, no sooner and no later. People make mistakes and Nastya and Josh do too! They think they move forward but they move back, they think they finally get it but they are wrong. I'll have to admit that in the beginning I was a little confused but the more I read the more obsessed I became. It's hard not to be drawn to this story.

Nastya is such a tragic character. Everything she does, happen because of a reason. A reason she does not know anymore because of her past. She copes by running until she can't breathe anymore, until her mind numbs and the memories vanish.

This book is not a love story althought it has one. You never truly comprehend what love is but when you see the love between Josh and Nastya, you realize that no matter what happens there's someone out there that will always get you. That he will know what your silence means even when the people closest to you don't. Their love is not a typical teenage-love, everything is hard. They is not a HEA but there's an end. An end that might leave you wanting for more but that will leave you peaceful and satisfied.

No words will descibe the splendor of this book.

Highly recommended!!!

PS: Book-hangover guaranteed!

Synopsis

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.