Review: The Sea of Tranquility

Tittle : The Sea of Tranquility

Author: Katja Millay

Publisher: Antisocialite Press

Pages: 328 pg

Format: Ebook

Rating: 5/5 star

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.

Nastya Kashnikov used to play piano,and now she did not. She used to speak and now she do not, not because she could not but she did not. She didn't speaks for 452 days. She didn't speak since the day it happen. The day it happen was the day someone murdered Nastya when she is still fifteen years old, took away her happiness and her identity. She spent three years wanting to meet her murderer and kill him with her left hand. Nobody knew that except her family. 

I hate my left hand. I hate to look at it. I hate it when it stutters and trembles and reminds me that my identity is gone. But I look at it anyway; because it also reminds me that I’m going to find the boy who took everything from me. I’m going to kill the boy who killed me, and when I kill him, I’m going to do it with my left hand

While Josh Bennet has lose everyone he loved. His mother,sister,father,grandmother and now his grandfather was sick of cancer. Josh Bennett’s story is no secret. And now at seventeen years old, there is no one left. Now all he wants is be left alone .

The adults are even worse because they love to make their dumbass comments about how well I’m doing; how well adjusted I’ve become; how well I handle everything. As if they have any clue. The only thing I’ve learned to do well is avoid, but everyone would rather believe it’s all good. That way they can crawl back under the shelter of that rock they live under. The one they think death can’t see them through

One night Nastya was running and end-up in Josh garage and later she spent most of her time in Josh garage.

They both found something like 'home' and as they friendship grow, Josh knew that must be something wrong in Nastya past and why Nastya is such a mystery to everyone. Josh always wan't to know why but she never answer it. Because none of her life was true. Not even her name.

“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.” 

As they relationship grow, Josh and Nastya learn that they complete each other. And when Josh grandfather die, he took Nastya to someplace and look trough the sky. He told her that his grandfather died this morning and tell her that before he died he give some advice.

I haven’t started counting yet. I wonder if it’s just me or if it’s like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they’ve been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren’t counting anymore, and you don’t even know when you stopped. That’s the moment they’re gone

“He said,” and I’m almost embarrassed telling her this, “that every woman has one unforgiveable thing, one thing that she’ll never be able to get past and for every woman it’s different. Maybe it’s being lied to, maybe it’s being cheated on, whatever. He said the trick in relationships was to figure out what that unforgiveable thing was, and to not do it. 

“People like to say love is unconditional, but it's not, and even if it was unconditional, it's still never free. There's always an expectation attached. They always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won't be happy unless you are ... I just don't want that responsibility.”  

They are in love. Everyone know that. They just wont admit it because Josh knew when he love someone, God take them away while Nastya know, she doesn't deserve to be loved. There's always a second chance for both of them, they just don't know. 

“It’s about the dream of second chances,” he says finally. He hasn’t raised his eyes from the paper on his desk and I feel him looking at me without looking when he uses his grandfather’s words. “The narrator doesn’t respect the beauty of life and the world around her, so it crushes her into the ground and once she’s dead, she realizes everything she took for granted and didn’t see right in front of her while she was alive. She’s begging for another chance to live again so she can appreciate it this time.”

“And does she get that chance?” she asks Josh while I desperately focus on the poster of literary terms on the wall and wait for absolution. When it comes, I barely hear it.

“She does.” 

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I know my review contain a lot of quotes, but it was because I don't know how to write and where to start the review so I suggest you to read this book as soon as possible. 

This is my first time reading a NA book and I know, I never regret that this book is my first. This is my first time too reading a dual POV book and I love it! I can see the story grow from they point of view. I love the writing, the character, the story line and Nastya-Josh relationship. Even though they relationship was so slow but it such a refreshing things to read about their relationship, especially when they start flirting each other.

When I finish this book, I just don't know what would I do if I was Nastya with her problem. And some chapter before the end of the book. It reap my heart apart. I wan't to cry but I didn't. And Josh. He is my new crush, I wish I could have a boyfriend who will kiss my hair in the courtyard :""

really you just have to read this book. 

I learn a lot from this book too, especially about sea tranquilitythat part of lunar mare of the moon :)

 And if my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him