There are books that surprise you.
Books that take you into a whole different world.
The kind of books you can not put down.
If a book keeps you awake during the night even if you should get up early the next morning….
When you find yourself waking up still holding the book in your hand after reading almost the whole night….
You already told all of your friends about the book, but you still can stop talking about it
and try to convince your friends to buy it….
When you finished a book and are still thinking about it weeks later….
You start crying and/or laughing just because you heard a song that reminds you of the book….
When you suddenly start to compare other books with this one-with the help of other titles, characters or books…
If any or all of thes situations describe a certain book for you – this book should be in this list because it rocked your world!
” “The Sea of Tranquility” by Katja Millay “
BLURB
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.
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
QUOTING
“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.”
“He’s kissing me. And when he does, part of me is lost. But it’s the part that’s twisted and mangled and wrong, and for just that moment, with his hands in my hair and his lips on my mouth, I can pretend that it never existed.”
“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 know at that moment what he’s given me and it isn’t a chair. It’s an invitation, a welcome, the knowledge that I am accepted here. He hasn’t given me a place to sit. He’s given me a place to belong.”
“What? Sunshine fits you. It’s bright and warm and happy. Just. Like. You.”
“Good Morning, Sunshine!” Josh F**king Bennett. By now, I’m pretty sure that if I were to find his birth certificate that is exactly what it would say.”
“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.”
“Maybe one day you’ll come back. Maybe you never will and that’ll suck, but you can’t keep doing this. The blame and the self-loathing and the bullshit. I can’t watch that. It makes me hate you for hating yourself. I don’t want to lose you. But I’d rather lose you if it means you’ll be happy. I think if you come back with me today, you’ll never be okay. And I’ll never be okay if you aren’t. I need to know that there’s a way for people like us to end up okay. I need to know that there even is such a thing as okay, maybe even good, and it’s out there and we just haven’t found it yet. There’s got to be a happier ending than this, here. There’s got to be a better story. Because we deserve one. You deserve one. Even if it doesn’t end with you coming back to me.”
“Call me Sunshine again, and I will murder you, cocksucker.”
“Nothing is perfect. It’s not even good yet. But maybe.”
“I don’t really care what people say about me. I’m fine with lies and rumors. It’s the truth I don’t want being told.”
“I’m tired of being responsible for other people’s misery. I can’t even put up with my own.”
“I’m going to walk over to you,” I say, taking one step at a time in her direction like I’m talking down a jumper. “I’m going to put my arms around you and I’m going to hold you,” I pause before taking the last step, “and you’re going to let me.”
“I don’t know how to say it – after all this time, I’m not even sure that I can – but I have to break her last rule, because if she knows nothing else, I need her to know this one thing.
‘I love you, Sunshine,’ I tell her, before I lose my nerve. ‘And I don’t give a shit whether you want me to or not.”
‘I love you, Sunshine,’ I tell her, before I lose my nerve. ‘And I don’t give a shit whether you want me to or not.”
“Seeing Josh is my homecoming. I didn’t tell him I was coming back. He doesn’t say anything when he sees me, and neither do I, because the fact that I’m here is an answer. We just look at each other and speak in the silence like we always have and no one interrupts the conversation.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Dying really isn’t so bad after you’ve done it once. And I have. I’m not afraid of death anymore. I’m afraid of everything else.”
“I have a black-belt in self-pity. I was an expert in the field. Still am. It’s a skill you never forget.”
“Just so you know,” I inform him, “one day, I’m going to get tired of sharing your affection with that coffee table and I’m going to make you choose.” “Just so you know,” he mimics me, “I would chop that table up and use it for firewood before I would ever choose anything over you.”
“You know I meant it. I am human. And male. And not remotely blind. Do you want me to say it again? You are distractingly, even if-that-is-not-a-real-word pretty. You are so pretty that I bullied Clay Whitaker into drawing me a picture of you so I could look at you when you aren’t around. You are so pretty that one of these days I’m going to lose a finger in my garage because I can’t concentrate with you so close to me. You are so pretty that I wish you weren’t so I wouldn’t want to hit every guy at school who looks at you, especially my best friend.”
“Just because I don’t talk about it, doesn’t mean I forget.”
“I may not be allowed to love her, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let anyone hurt her.”
“When you look at her what do you feel?… Joy, fear, frustration, longing, friendship, anger, need, despair, love, lust?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“All of it.”
“Josh Bennett laughs, and for one minute, everything is right in the world.”
“Congratulations, then. You wanted to be ruined? Well, you did yourself one better because you wrecked me, too, Sunshine. Now we’re both worth shit.”
“I say Sunshine and then she shatters.
All the pieces of all the girls go flying and I’m holding the one who’s left.”
All the pieces of all the girls go flying and I’m holding the one who’s left.”
“Where did you go?’ His voice drops just slightly and loses even the suggestion of a smile.
He’s watching me like he’s not sure he’s allowed to ask question, and he’s not even sure he wants the answer. I can almost see grandfather’s word and josh’s doubt about them swimming in his head. On every side of me are the lights and the tools and the wood and the boots and the boy I want to see forever. And if the my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him.
I don’t say anything right away, because I just want one minute to look at his face before I gave him my last secret.
And then I tell him.
‘Your garage.”