Last True Poets of the Sea

You’re a kid. Be lost. Ask questions. Be safe but stupid. Listen.

This is such a difficult book to review, even though I loved it to bits. It feels more like an experience or a mood than a story even though it most definitely has a plot, and character arcs, and all the other things that make a sequence of events and feelings book-shaped. Somehow, it reminded me a lot of when I was the characters' age, even though I faced completely different emotions, struggles, and situations. I can't say I was ever like Violet, or Liv, or any of the characters, but I still got caught remembering how I was just as confused and struggling to make sense of life and trying to shuffle through versions of myself to find one that didn't suck. 

This is a story of families, and grief, and how it's not only the dead you can grieve for; of making sense of mental illness in the family and in your head; of learning to build connections; of letting go; of being a mess; of getting out of the mess you've made; of looking into the past to find the future; of shipwreck-hunting; of diving too deep and finding a way out. It's written in beautiful, beautiful prose, it contains some of the most hauntingly, viivdly engrossing snapshots of being by the sea I've encountered in literature since Ruthanna Emrys's Winter Tide, and a love triangle that actually makes sense.

It feels like being on the cusp of growing up: bittersweet and confusing and painful, and also full of wonder you don't immediately recognize. I wish I had books like this when I was that age.