I throw my books down on the far corner worktable where I sit every year, at least during the time we’re expected to sit. The first couple weeks are a rehash of rules for equipment usage and safety procedures that I could recite verbatim if anybody asked. It’s not supposed to be quiet in here, and this is the only time of year when it is. It’s the quiet that’s initially unnerving. There aren’t tools and pieces of lumber on every surface. When I walk in, I immediately feel at home, even though the space looks entirely different than it did in June. I’m sweating already from sitting out in the sun at lunch, but there won’t be much in the way of air-conditioning in the workshop. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.įourth hour can’t come soon enough. 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. But as the undeniable pull between them intensifies, he starts to wonder if he will ever learn the secrets she’s been hiding-or if he even wants to. Everyone except Nastya who won’t go away until she’s insinuated herself into every aspect of his life.

When your name is synonymous with death, everyone tends to give you your space.

Every person he loves has been taken from his life until, at seventeen years old, there is no one left. But her plans only last so long before she finds herself inexplicably drawn to the one person as isolated as herself: Josh Bennett. Two and a half years after an unspeakable tragedy left her a shadow of the girl she once was, Nastya Kashnikov moves to a new town determined to keep her dark past hidden and hold everyone at a distance. 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. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shapeshifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. I live in a world without magic or miracles. A School Library Journal Best Book of 2013

Sea of tranquility book cover