Words Composed of Sea and Sky by Erica George Review

 Hello Friends :)

I pray today finds you all doing well, and I want to thank you all for joining me for another book review here on The Preppy Book Princess.

Young Adult Contemporaries used to be my absolute favorite genre. I voraciously read each and every one I could find, and I used to love so many of them.

Unfortunately, in the last few years I've started to notice a downwards trend within this genre. 

They are no longer clean or cutesy, and instead are chocked full of inappropriate content, and I find myself really having to weed through the available titles.

I've gotten a lot fussier over the last couple of years about the types of content I allow myself to read, watch and listen to, and I've honestly gotten to the point where I don't often pick up a secular young adult title anymore, unless I know good and sure that the author keeps them fairly clean.

I've been disappointed with the majority of the ones I've read in the past year or so, but I recently found myself really drawn to a certain title, and I was hoping it would be a different experience.

Today I'm here to tell you whether or not that was the case.

Keep reading for my full review.

Words Composed of Sea and Sky by Erica George:

Source: Libby App

Publisher: Running Press Kids

Publication Date: May 25th, 2021

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Synopsis:

This modern summer romance set on Cape Cod features two young adult poets divided by centuries.

Michaela Dunn, living on present day Cape Cod, dreams of getting into an art school, something her family just doesn't understand. When her stepfather refuses to fund a trip for a poetry workshop, Michaela finds the answer in a local contest searching for a poet to write the dedication plaque for a statue honoring Captain Benjamin Churchill, a whaler who died at sea 100 years ago.

She struggles to understand why her town venerates Churchill, an almost mythical figure whose name adorns the school team and various tourist traps. When she discovers the 1862 diary of Leta Townsend, however, she gets a glimpse of Churchill that she didn't quite anticipate. In 1862, Leta Townsend writes poetry under the name Benjamin Churchill, a boy who left for sea to hunt whales. Leta is astonished when Captain Churchill returns after his rumored death. She quickly falls for him. But is she falling for the actual captain or the boy she constructed in her imagination? 

(synopsis from goodreads)

My Review:

I haven't really enjoyed the majority of the young adult contemporaries I've picked up lately, but the beautiful cover and title of this one had me hoping it would be a much different experience. I've always loved timeslip novels, and I haven't had the chance to read too many of them within the YA genre, so I was really looking forward to giving this one a try.

Unfortunately, while I did love Erica George's engaging writing style, and the atmospheric setting of both time periods, this one ended up not being one I enjoyed.

I'm personally not a fan of love triangles, so I didn't enjoy the fact that one is present in both time periods, nor did I enjoy the fact that each of the main female protagonists makes juvenile decisions in order to please toxic male characters that really had next to nothing going for them.

The part I was looking most forward to was reading the history surrounding Michaela's search for Captain Churchill, and this ended up being the most disappointing of all. I couldn't begin to understand why the town was so obsessed with someone they knew next to nothing about, especially when what they did know of his character was nothing good. As the reader is treated to more of his story in the chapters set in the past, it was easy to see that he was honestly kind of awful, and it was hard to care about his story being solved when he was such a jerk to everyone around him, especially Leta.

Two last things I have to quickly comment on. Throughout the majority of the story, there's huge tension between Michaela and her stepdad that causes a rift to emerge, and the two of them really have next to no relationship. There's a lot of deep buried hurt that caused this situation, and I felt like a serious conversation needed to happen between the two, but at the end of the story I was disappointed that most of this seemed to just be brushed off, and instantly fixed in a way that made next to no sense.

Lastly, I didn't personally appreciate the amount of cursing that's included throughout. It made the story less enjoyable for me, and I would have enjoyed it much better without.

Final Rating: 2/5.

I wouldn't personally recommend this one, and I probably wouldn't pick up a book by this author again.

Thanks so much for reading guys! Have a great rest of your day :)

This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The photo does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owners.