The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 out of 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

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 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.

The Sea of Tranquility is a rich, intense, and brilliantly imagined story about a lonely boy, an emotionally fragile girl, and the miracle of second chances.

I meant to read this book years ago when I first heard about it. I thought that it was an interesting premise in that each of the characters in the story appeared to be flawed from the get go. I am a sucker for flawed characters because I find that it makes them more relatable and realistic. 

I enjoyed each of the characters and being able to get both of their points of view in the book because it added depth to each of them. The author was able to present things in such a way that when one of the main characters was thinking about the other readers were introduced to the character in a different way. It showed the way that they were not only perceived by others but also the small details that the other character was able to notice that others may not have seen. I especially liked Nastya and that may be due to her being the main focus of the story. I found her reactions to her issues to be fascinating. Every chapter felt like discovering another layer to her and how she has changed as a result of her trauma. Josh was no slouch as a character either but I think that his purpose was to be a balance regardless of his own issues due to the extreme nature of Nastya's problem. I have not read a book with a character that goes through what Nastya did which helped the book to feel more novel than others. 

I appreciated how the author did not have the characters heal and/or fix each other. This seems to be a theme in a lot of books out there and I don't feel like that is realistic. It can happen for some but I think that in many of the relationships with people with issues a relationship can add stress to their lives rather than healing. There were no magical fixes in the book and I loved that. I'm not saying that the book is depressing or has an unsatisfying ending. I feel that the ending of the book was appropriate and showed the respect that this particular author has for readers.