Book: On The Island
Author: Tracey Garvis-Graves
Pages: 347
Read On: My iPad
How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 hours (I read it in one sitting!)
Plot Summary: When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.
T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments -- instead of his friends.
Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter.
Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.
General Thoughts: I've been in a mood for romance books lately...like really in the mood to read something light, happy and fluffy! This was one of the many books I've recently read from the genre. i meant to read only a few pages and see if I liked the writing but I was totally sucked in. I couldn't put the book down and read it all in one sitting.
What I Liked:
1. The writing was rather nice. Easy, simple and very engrossing.
2. Even though the premise sounds incredibly skeevy- what with the woman being 3o and the guy only 16 when they first get stranded on the island, their romance and the physical aspects of their relationship are handled well and in a total non-creepy way.
3. I liked both the characters, the book flips from one perspective to another and I enjoyed both their voices equally.
4. The life on the island was simply brilliantly done. This bit of the book was the best part in my opinion, it was insanely gripping- their day-to-day struggles was engaging. This entire portion moved fast and I found myself rooting for the two of them.
5. The struggles on the island and their ways to deal with it was very realistic and how I'd imagine most people would act in a similar situation.
6. The pace of the book, the way in which the four years moved was great too.
7. The second half of the book, the part where they come back home is also just as good..nearly as good as the first. I liked reading about Anna and TJ re-adjusting to regular life after life on the island.
What I Didn't Like:
1. The book switched between TJ and Anna's perspectives, but you really couldn't tell a difference between their voices. For a woman of 30 and a teenager, they sounded way too similar.
2. The second half was not as great as life on the island.
Rating: 4/5
Overall, I really enjoyed the book and recommend it if you are looking for a fun and sweet read.
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