On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves

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Book 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.

        This is my first book about plane crash so I honestly had no idea what to expect. My first thoughts were connected with a TV show Lost, cause I used to be a big fan of it. Anyway I was really excited to read this one.

        First things you notice in this book is dual POV which is for me an interesting thing. I like it when there are more POVs in a book but of course it means that female writer has to get inside man's head or vice versa. I think that in this cause the work is done pretty well.

        As you see in the blurb we have two main characters. Anna the thirty-year-old teacher and T.J. seventeen-year-old student. Everything starts when one year T.J.'s family goes to vocation on Maldives and they hire Anna to tutor their son cause he lost a lot of school time. The reason for that is his cancer. As any other teen T.J. is not happy to spend his holiday like that cause he missed his friends and teen life. Anna on the other side is tired of waiting for her boyfriend to propose and decides that some distance between them is necessary. The problems starts when during their trip to island T.J. and Anna survive the plane crash and soon they're stuck on the isolated island. At the beginning they hoped that the help was coming but as time passed by their hopes disappeared. Being stuck there they have no other option than to find a way to survive. After few months they get into routine and their life on the island becomes bearable. But being alone leaves them a lot of time for thinking about life and everything in general. Soon their lives gets more and more complicated.

       I must admit that I was really surprised with this book. It was really readable and easy to follow. It didn't blow my mind or anything but for this type of a book it really has got high rating. This book is perfect for relaxing and enjoying your read without a lot of thinking.

Until the next time,

***NOTE: Copy of this book is kindly provided by publisher, Penguin Group , via NetGalley. Thank you.

I'm not paid for writing a review - I do it as a lover of written word. All opinions in this review are personal.