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ireadthebooks 's review for:
Searching for Sky
by Jillian Cantor
Y’all, I don’t even know. This book was kind of good and also annoyed the living heck out of me.
Sky and River are two teenagers who live on an uncharted island in the Pacific, where they and their respective parental figures crashed and apparently everyone else but the four of them died. Helmut and Petal (River’s dad and Sky’s mom) renamed them and taught them to take care of themselves, and they’re living a life of simple isolation. Then the parents die and it’s a little shady, and they get rescued.
So Sky goes back to California, where everyone calls her Megan and tries to teach her what cars and TV are and she doesn’t care. That goes about as well as you’d expect because Sky just wants to find River and go back to the island. Sky isn’t interested in the shallow pursuits of modern society like television, she doesn’t understand why people lie to one another, and no one will tell her what’s going on because they’re afraid she’ll have a meltdown. Because Sky is unhappy for 95% of the book, and it doesn’t get better, one really wonders what we’re supposed to have learned here. Modern society is shallow? Okay, we already knew that. There’s this whole subplot about how Helmut was a cult leader who poisoned a bunch of his followers by having River feed them poisoned apples (channeling his inner Snow White’s evil stepmother) and that he probably took the poisonous mushrooms on purpose, thereby killing himself and Petal, but River was suspicious and didn’t let Sky or himself eat them, so they didn’t die. Now everyone thinks River is a murderer even though he was like FOUR when that happened, and he’s gone into hiding from the paparazzi, and is living like a hobo on the beach.
The plot, as you can tell, is kind of a mess but the style was what really irritated me more than anything else. Sky refers to everything as a proper noun and I swear, it was like she was about to burst out into song like Pocahontas and start singing about the riverbend. The ocean is “Ocean” as in “I walked to Ocean” or “I missed Ocean.” I get that the author was going for a “Sky is one with nature” thing but it didn’t work and every time she referred to Ocean, Beach, Bathroom Tree, etc. I just wanted to shake her. It took me out of the story a bunch of times, though it seems small, because it just read like the author was trying too hard to make this novel poignant and thoughtful.
The other thing is the ship. (Like the romantic ship, not the ship that rescues them.) River/Lucas pretty much disappears once they get to California, and no one will let Sky/Megan see him. Sky isn’t searching for herself; she’s searching for LUCAS, so the title is also just alliterating for no reason. (Sky knows exactly who she is, so it’s also not referring to any kind of self-discovery because Sky takes no crap.) But anyway, Sky wants River back and eventually she finds him and they decide to try to go back to their island.
So to sum up: Searching for Sky is pretty weird, the writing bugged me, and then the book is over and I’m depressed and so is Sky.
This review for "Searching for Sky" first appeared on StarlightBookReviews.com.
Sky and River are two teenagers who live on an uncharted island in the Pacific, where they and their respective parental figures crashed and apparently everyone else but the four of them died. Helmut and Petal (River’s dad and Sky’s mom) renamed them and taught them to take care of themselves, and they’re living a life of simple isolation. Then the parents die and it’s a little shady, and they get rescued.
So Sky goes back to California, where everyone calls her Megan and tries to teach her what cars and TV are and she doesn’t care. That goes about as well as you’d expect because Sky just wants to find River and go back to the island. Sky isn’t interested in the shallow pursuits of modern society like television, she doesn’t understand why people lie to one another, and no one will tell her what’s going on because they’re afraid she’ll have a meltdown. Because Sky is unhappy for 95% of the book, and it doesn’t get better, one really wonders what we’re supposed to have learned here. Modern society is shallow? Okay, we already knew that. There’s this whole subplot about how Helmut was a cult leader who poisoned a bunch of his followers by having River feed them poisoned apples (channeling his inner Snow White’s evil stepmother) and that he probably took the poisonous mushrooms on purpose, thereby killing himself and Petal, but River was suspicious and didn’t let Sky or himself eat them, so they didn’t die. Now everyone thinks River is a murderer even though he was like FOUR when that happened, and he’s gone into hiding from the paparazzi, and is living like a hobo on the beach.
The plot, as you can tell, is kind of a mess but the style was what really irritated me more than anything else. Sky refers to everything as a proper noun and I swear, it was like she was about to burst out into song like Pocahontas and start singing about the riverbend. The ocean is “Ocean” as in “I walked to Ocean” or “I missed Ocean.” I get that the author was going for a “Sky is one with nature” thing but it didn’t work and every time she referred to Ocean, Beach, Bathroom Tree, etc. I just wanted to shake her. It took me out of the story a bunch of times, though it seems small, because it just read like the author was trying too hard to make this novel poignant and thoughtful.
The other thing is the ship. (Like the romantic ship, not the ship that rescues them.) River/Lucas pretty much disappears once they get to California, and no one will let Sky/Megan see him. Sky isn’t searching for herself; she’s searching for LUCAS, so the title is also just alliterating for no reason. (Sky knows exactly who she is, so it’s also not referring to any kind of self-discovery because Sky takes no crap.) But anyway, Sky wants River back and eventually she finds him and they decide to try to go back to their island.
Spoiler
And then the author freaking kills River/Lucas off, and you find out that the sweet neighbor Sky/Megan has been hanging out with was getting paid by her grandmother to teach her how to be a teenager, and since I wasn’t really shipping them anyway, I didn’t even CARE. Cantor blew a death cannonball right through my ship and now Sky/Megan has to stay in California and learn to use forks and it is just pretty darn depressing.So to sum up: Searching for Sky is pretty weird, the writing bugged me,
Spoiler
Cantor sinks the sweetest, most innocent little ship in the world,This review for "Searching for Sky" first appeared on StarlightBookReviews.com.