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Suzy Henderson: Review of "Adrift" by Elizabeth A Reeves

Suzy Henderson: Review of "Adrift" by Elizabeth A Reeves: Meg is herself adrift following the death of her father. She never knew her mother, having been told that she  drowned when Meg was very yo...

Adrift: A Reader's Review

S.M. Blooding rated it This book instantly drew me in. The emotion was written very well in the opening scene. The imagery was crisp throughout the book, and there were times when I honestly felt like I was at sea.

This book has all the right structural elements. The plot was great! It really felt original! I love how Ms. Reeves entwined Devin and Meg’s lives together. It’s a whole lot more than just boy meets girl! This boy has a heavy weight of responsibility, and a really huge failure with grim consequences riding on his shoulders. Poor Meg is just trying to figure out how to swim in this new world she suddenly finds herself in.

The characters are great! I love Maura! LOL! I want a Maura. Poor Meg. Man! She’s in a really tough spot as she unravels just how much trouble she was born into.

And Omyn? OMW! That added so many layers to the characters and to the plot. I couldn’t stop reading! I love the mythology, the history, the build up! It was great!

Ms. Reeves, however, missed a few key emotional transitions, I think. When emotional transitions are missed, then you have whiplash-like mood swings, and/or unexplained behaviors. It was honestly nothing more than a missing sentence or two here and there. The ride could have been smoother, but it wasn’t like trying to ride a horse in an awkward trot either.

All in all, GREAT story! I definitely recommend it!

Fall

The seasons are starting to change here in Arizona. It's a subtle thing here. We don't get the same turn of the leaves or drastic change in the weather. Half the time the kids on Halloween are out in their shirt sleeves, no warm clothing in sight.

Fall is my favorite time of year. I look forward to it with all the ravenous enthusiasm of a person who hates the heat. Fall means that I can start spending more time outside, I can plant the winter garden, and I can start planning for the holidays, which always means Family.

Family is everything.

I know that, symbolically, fall is the time of year when everything ripens and prepares for the season of death, but isn't there a richness in getting to that point in life? I'm not there yet, but I've witnessed many people in the Falls of their lives who seem freed to become who they always should have been.

It's a season of change-- of looking forward to the still time and the rebirth to come-- a time of hearth and home and knitting by the fire. A time of homemade marshmallows and copious amounts of hot chocolate.

There is a richness and decadence in these last moments.

Poison Princess | Countown Widget

Poison Princess | Countown Widget

RavenzReviews Gives Adrift ***** on Goodreads!

Tammy Schweiger's review Sep 27, 12
Read in September, 2012
I can't say enough good things about this book! Adrift is the first book in The Last Selkie series and promises to deliver with each new installment. Adrift introduces us to Meg. Meg was raised by her father after losing her mother to a drowning accident when Meg was 16 months old. Now, at 20 years old, her father suddenly dies, leaving her with nothing. Once she finds a home for her Shetland, Coal, Meg leaves the only home she's ever known with no destination in mind except the direction her car was facing when she left, east and north. Once she reaches the Canadian border, she boards a ferry and finds herself in Newfoundland; Trinity to be exact. While hiking out of town, something changes within Meg. Something, or someone, is calling to her from the ocean. The pull is so strong and having nothing left to lose, She leaps into the freezing water. Her last conscious thought is that she is drowning. When she awakens, she thinks she is in heaven. There's a young girl standing over her, bathed in golden light. She wonders, is this an angel? Taking in her surroundings, Meg realizes she is in an old cottage wearing an old long dress. She's plagued with confusion. Where am I? is her primary focus. Once outside, she surveys her surroundings further and from a distance can see a man, not much older than her. He's not overly handsome but has a certain aire about him that makes him mildly attractive. He approaches Meg and introduces himself as Devin, then wants to know who she is, where she came from and why she's in the cottage. Other than the who and the where, she is unable to give a rational explanation for how she came to be in the cottage. She further explains that she has no home or family, and nowhere to go. Devin's mother Maura has a home nearby and offers Meg room and board in exchange for help in the garden, with the chicken coop, and around the house. Not wanting to impose, Meg graciously takes Maura up on her generous offer. 

Maura reminds me of an old hippie witch who lives out in the middle of nowhere and lives off her land. I like Maura. She quickly fills the void of not having a mother. Now, Devin, he's a prickly fellow. He's often moody and unpredictable. He clearly has a problem with Meg, though at first it may seem he is a little bit jealous of her. As the story progresses, Reeves explains more in depth why Devin is the way he is. 

Meg continues to feel the pull of the ocean and is now dreaming of a man, Omyn, who lures her deeper into who she truly is. Upon realizing that they can no longer allow Meg to go on not having the answers she needs, Devin and Maura decide to tell her everything. 

Twenty years ago, the gateway between Fairie and our world was breached and Devin's father died. It was during that breach that a selkie maiden came through the gateway. Devin and Maura believe that maiden was Meg's mother and that she didn't drown but infact was unable to resist the call of the sea and went home. Meg's father must have known this because he did everything he could to keep Meg as far from the water as possible. When her father died, there was no one left to protect her from finding out who she really is, the last selkie.

This story is riveting and powerful. It is about a girl, so lost in this world, coming to terms with who and what she is. She discovers love for the first time and struggles between the two things she wants most, the man she loves and the mother she never knew. Adrift is a must read!

Avow News

I am very excited to announce that the prequel to Adrift, Avow, will be free now and forever on Amazon. I'd love to see everyone jump in and enjoy this little piece of the Last Selkie series.


A Last Selkie Short Story.

A tragic life cut short.

What could be crueler than facing death alone?

Twenty years before Adrift, a young man named Ethan Tanner found out he had a inoperable malignant brain tumor and had less than a year to live.

Impossibly, help comes in a mythical form.

Also-- if you haven't checked them out, there have been some great New Releases this week. Check out Rose Pressey's How to Date a Demon and H P Mallory's Something Witchy This Way Comes . 

A Great Review from Tales of Gideon

Review of AdriftNormally I wouldn't do another review so soon after the last, but I tore through this book and finished in record time.  As you can see from the review, that's a good thing.


Adrift (The Last Selkie, Book One) by Elizabeth A. Reeves—êêêêê stars
Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book one Amazon, then decided to review it. 
Warning: There are spoilers and hints of spoilers in this review.
Meg is left bereft and alone when her father dies of cancer.  After giving away or selling everything of value, she gets in a car and heads in random direction.  After driving until she’s out of money, she finds herself in Newfoundland, on the coast.   The sea calls to her, and Meg gives herself to it.  When she wakes, she’s in a cottage with a strange woman.  Without speaking, the woman disappears.  That is just the start of the weirdness that becomes normal for Meg.
This book deals heavily with the Fae.  I always approach those books with trepidation, because it’s so easy to make the Fae into humans with pretty magic, when the old legends are so different.  I always wonder which I’m getting when I start reading.  I shouldn’t have worried in this case, because the Fae in Reeve’s story are those dark creatures of legend.  They are presented as wonderfully not-human—not evil, just not us.  The world is richly described, with care given to immerse the reader in the world.  I found the characters interesting, even the ones we only catch glimpses of. 
As for the negative, I found only a few typos, nothing too glaring.  The story itself certainly didn’t put me off.  The only real “negative” was the ending, as in, the book ended!   The end was bittersweet and set with a cliffhanger, yet was written in such a way that I felt like the story being told in Adrift (a very apt title, I’ll add)  was finished, and Meg was getting ready for a new adventure.
I dithered between four and five stars on this.  The final question was, “Would I read this story again?”  When I answered yes, I felt that it has the fifth star in my book.

A Beautiful ***** Review for Adrift (Goodreads)

Andrea rated it Shelves: goodreads-first-readsI was lucky enough to win a copy of Adrift in a Goodreads First Reads Giveaway.

Initially, I was going to rate this story 4 stars; with a bit of thought, I couldn't see any reason not to give it the full five - this sweet story left me with a contented smile on my face and a yearning to read the next installment!

For a short book, it was a large book; it was spaced well with a decent sized easy-read font. I have never felt the need to comment on such before, but I found this to be so much easier on the eye to read; I find the usual Times New Roman to be quite offensive to the eye, and this made a delightful change.

Adrift is a poignantly appropriate novel about loss and discovery, emptiness and purpose, of fact and fiction, all brought together. It is a beautiful coming of age tale, with a central theme about the conflicts about who we are; how our heritage and the decisions we make affect who we are, how the conflict between different aspects of the self can make one feel 'adrift', not belonging anywhere or to anyone.

It is easy to empathise with the protagonist, Meg, in her loss of her family and ultimately her identity. The charmingly interwoven legend of the Selkie in with the modern novel makes a wonderful backdrop for Meg's plight to discover herself and how to cope with who she is; Elizabeth Reeves manages to describe the two with seeming ease and elegance.

Reeves's style of writing seems to make the reader's eyes skip across the page, absorbing the words of the story without much thought involved, making this a lovely, easy to read novel.

I really enjoyed reading Adrift; it rates much more highly in my opinion than most other young adult novels I have read (*cough* Hunger Games *cough*), as the language is not overly simplistic and the writing style, although easy to read, is quite sophisticated and in no way patronising. It seems to be a novel written in a way that all age groups can enjoy it, without being too complex for the younger audience and without being too simplistic and silted for the older audience. A beautiful little novel; I will definitely be keeping my eye out for the sequel

Adrift: Another Wonderful ***** Review

5.0 out of 5 stars Textured...., September 10, 2012By Peg Lewis "Grammy Peg" (Anacortes WA USA) - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Adrift (The Last Selkie Book One) (Kindle Edition)This book is fun to read and engaging. But what really stood out to me was how textured it is. And how balanced.

First, about the balance: you have setting, from landlocked Oklahoma and a certain two dimensional barrenness to three-dimensional Newfoundland, or maybe it's four-dimensional. You have dry and wet. You have flat and wavy, choppy and still, trees and caves, air and water, busy and unmoving. And then you have inside and out, comfort and danger. One of the main characters traverses the two worlds with and at ease, the other is never easy. You have alive and dead, the gardens and the inevitable sea, the bright and the dark.

Second, about the texture: wet and dry, yes; but also the texture of hair, yarn, rocks, wood, seaweed, oilskin and sealskin. The texture of smells, of what the hands are doing, of sleep and wakefulness and back again. Of edgy loyalty and smooth enticement.

And all of it with an undercurrent of danger, of no simple answers, of the easy way never being the chosen way, of conflict between need for comfort and accepting comfort. And of loss, always of loss.

This book is fundamentally about loss and the toss-up between surviving loss and losing the will to survive.

While you're having your good read, you will be walking dangerously close to another world. Is it real? I wonder when I'll find out.