Reviews

V cute YA. Wish I had this when I was 14 so badly. Love a twelfth night retelling too, particularly when it leans into the gay stuff. Overall very cosy and sweet <3

starryeved's review against another edition

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3.0

In that moment, we were the last true poets of the sea, and what mattered more than anything else was our quest.

3½ stars. Julia Drake manages to pen something so simultaneously vulnerable, universal, and specific all at once, while also profoundly making statements on mental health and recovery and scrabbling to retain long-lost love (between family, siblings, people—you name it).

The Last True Poets of the Sea is evocative, with compelling dialogue and writing. Really, it felt like what I wanted John Green's works to feel like for me in middle school—adventure, but not the type you expect. Rather, adventures about finding yourself, searching for the unknown, only to find something new and somewhat unexpected. C'est la vie.

A definite comfort read with ups and downs, and worth every minute.

micropunk's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

blok_sera_szwajcarskiego's review against another edition

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5.0

"Shipwrecks are a recessive gene"

I don't know if I more love or hate this book.

And not hate as in "I hate it but I love it". No. Hate as I truly despise this book, in every word and letter that makes it.

There were a lot of books I couldn't rate. There were a lot of books that had great elements, but overall couldn't catch my attention or stay in memory for longer. But this is the first time I seriously don't know in which way my emotions go, because in the same time I want to forget about this book and read it again and again and again.

It starts very simple. Violet, year sixteen, goes back to her uncle's place, somewhere she used to visit a lot as a child. Her brother just attempted suicide, her parents seems to hate her, and she is after the Year of Wild, when word regret hadn't exist in her dictionary. She's put to work at local aquarium, with the stuff counting two people and one blue lobster. This mess known as a teenager has to fit into small town that her ancestors settled and try to survive, both in her own head and her own past.

It sounds like another life-changing young adult novel, doesn't it? But no. It's nothing like that. Oh it's nothing like that.
And exactly everything like that in the same time.

This is a book about broken people. A very broken people. In this plot was cursed wildness, danger, weirdness and strangeness. This book is a manifest of main character, and the description of her fits description of it: she filled the room in the same moment she entered.

No one here thinks straight. They're all reckless, stupid, wild creatures that jump from one emotion to another, exploding in anger, happiness, grief, sadness and ecstasy. At first I was so confused, and the more and more I read the more I became friends with this feeling. I'm not sure if I was more irritated or intrigued with their actions, but it kept me reading.

The plot is also intriguing. It heavily rests on characters' shoulders, both creating them and being created by them. Mostly Violet, because the narration reminds more of river of thoughts mixed with journal than the any other narration.

But Violet is,, well. Violet. And because of it I was a ball of emotions. She's falling for anyone she can, she's fooling anyone she can, she hates herself so much she passionately adore herself. Everything she does ends up in catastrophe, and she's fully aware of that. So she brings chaos everywhere she can. This is no ordinary main character, and no ordinary plot point.

And if I hadn't made a long break somewhere between 300 and 325 page, I think I would throw this book outta window.

So why am I giving it five stars?

Because I too don't think straight. I can't, especially after this book. It wasn't an easy one, but so charismatic and weird and different and wild and reckless I couldn't resist. You know I can't resist reading the weirdest books I can find, but this? This is different. This is special.

It's like a DONTNOD game. Reading I felt like replaying Life Is Strange or Tell Me Why. I felt again broken by those stories, I felt emotions and stupid thoughts like WhY iT hAs So BrOkEn GrApHiCs. But in the end?
I don't know man.

I really don't know.

Will I come back to this story in the future?
Oh definitely.
Because I have never read book more true yet fictional.

Because this, my friends, is a Book with the capital B.