The Sea of Tranquility

I never gave two shits about normal. I wanted extraordinary.

This book has overwhelmingly great reviews so I decided to re-read it after so many years just in case I might have a different experience. I did hate it less than the first time, I had very little emotional response to it this time around and I still don't know why this book is so loved.

There's barely anything organic or that makes sense in this. The setup screams DRAMA, no subtlety at all. You have a collection o teens who are all beautiful and insanely talented and a few of them are really messed up and have the most tragic pasts. Nastya (Millie) and Josh end up together because they're so broken and so unwilling to work on themselves that they can't help but merge in co-dependency. It's not romantic, it's sad. They're not well-developed characters, their misery and poor mental health is the only trait they have, it comes out through every pore they have. Maybe this would be appealing if I was 16 and still emo. This is not about experiencing characters go through a healing process, this was romanticizing trauma, glamorizing destructive behaviors, and making excuses for constantly making poor choices.

Nastya's character is so over the top she doesn't feel real, at all. I can see the puppeteer behind her at all times. And so many things just defy logic even when taking trauma into account.
1. Nastya dresses in revealing clothing and heavy make-up (in her own words undead Russian whore) in order to scare people away. (Why was it necessary to add the Russian part, like Russian women don't have to deal with enough crap stereotypes already, there's no need to perpetuate this in a YA book). Also, no school would have left her dress like that. It also makes no sense because instead of being ignored, like she wants to, she gets noticed even more, duh. Josh-who-has-a-force-field-around-him notices her and approaches her, Drew notices and starts laying siege to "date" her, girls notice her and start hating, Clay notices her and starts obsessively drawing portraits of her. Kevin Leonard noticed her. Obviously, she's not at fault for what Kevin did, she could have walked around naked for all I care, no one had the right to lay one finger on her. But the claim that she would dress in eye-popping outfits and make-up as to NOT get any attention is ridiculous. 2. Her selective mutism. She chooses not to talk for years with anyone yet she becomes this chatty Kathy with not only Josh but Drew as well in the span of a couple of weeks?3. She doesn't talk at the beginning of the book at all, to anyone but she never has a pen and paper around just in case something important has to be communicated. 4. Her parents and aunt throw in the towel and are non-existent and just let her do whatever she wants. Like not going to therapy, running at night with no pepper spray, no phone with her. Spending so much unsupervised time with a teenage boy they know nothing about. She could've been doing crack and there's no sign they cared where she is and what she's doing. 3. She knows who attacked her yet she never tells the police, not because she's afraid, just because. She lets him roam free even thought he could be be doing the same things to other girls.4. Actually, she basically lets two attackers roam free, Kevin Leonard and Aidan and she forgives both of them. I DON'T GET IT. 5. Supposedly the first monstrous attack she suffered through had caused her to be infertile, her reproductive organs were damaged beyond recovery. But when she has sex with Josh the first time he talks about how tight she is, she must be a virgin. After all, she's gone through, that's what's really important, that she's a virgin? What? 5. She gets black-out drunk several times but that's ok because there's no adult in her life to notice it?6. She was seriously hating most girls, categorizing them sluts or bitches. Just because she was a victim doesn't make her superior to other girls. 7. She apparently wanted to be left alone but she literally goes to Josh's garage every night, uninvited, and refused to leave when he asks her to. She has no respect for his boundaries but that's cute because she's a girl and a victim and he's a guy, right?8. She has no problem with Josh calling her Sunshine non-stop but she draws the line at Drew.9. The whole Sunshine thing was overall yucky. I can understand it as a joke every once in a while but he never calls her by her name, just Sunshine this, Sunshine that, it's disturbing.

Original review in 2014

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 disintegrate and things suck.

raped her

it's ok to not press charges when someone tried to take advantage of you