Book: The Girl The Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young

Published September 2019 by Wednesday Books|327 pages

Where I Got It: I own the hardcover

Series: Sky In The Deep #2

Genre: YA Fantasy

The new gut-wrenching epic from the New York Times bestselling author of Sky in the Deep.

For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.

For the first time in generations, the leaders of the Svell are divided. Should they maintain peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power? And when their chieftain looks to Tova to cast the stones, she sets into motion a series of events that will not only change the landscape of the mainland forever but will give her something she believed she could never have again—a home.

The Girl The Sea Gave Back was just okay for me.  It was something I struggled to get through, and I had a harder time with this book than I did with Sky In The Deep.

I felt so confused when I was reading it!  It felt like there were a lot of names and places I couldn’t keep track of, and I could not picture anything to save my life.

It didn’t help that I didn’t realize it was a companion to Sky In The Deep.  It focuses on different characters, and it’s set way later than Sky In The Deep.  You don’t need to read that one in order to read this one, because they are both stand-alones, but I do find myself wishing that I had.  And it’s pretty much so I could get back into this world, because I felt like it was very minimal.  That or I missed it because I couldn’t focus on the book.

This is a review I’m really struggling with.  As pretty as the cover is (and I tend to get lured in by pretty covers), this story was a struggle to get through.  I liked the idea of it, though, and there were some lines that really took me away.  I’m not someone who writes down quotes or anything like that, but there were a few I wanted to have written down in my notebook.

2 stars.  I struggled to get through this one, and I could only read a few chapters at a time.  It’s definitely not the story for me, but I’d still pick up the next book that Young comes out with.