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A review by bdklug
The Great Offshore Grounds by Vanessa Veselka
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This is exactly the kind of book I needed for this point of my life — and for the many previous phases of my life that have felt like this one. Unemployed, feeling at times buoyant and excited about the possibilities and other times totally hopeless and lost.
The Great Offshore Grounds is a family saga. Cheyenne and Livy are half-sisters — they have the same father and different mothers, but from birth were both raised by Kirsten, and they have never known the other mother or which mother is whose biological parent. On the day of their estranged father’s latest wedding, he hands them an envelope containing the name of their other mother, setting off a series of events that will change everything.
We follow multiple perspectives throughout the story: Cheyenne, Livy, Kirsten, and the girls’ unofficially adopted brother Essex are each grappling with finding themselves at a turning point, feeling purposeless, broke, and lost. Something that this book gets so right is the pressure to *DO SOMETHING*, “find your purpose,” and be successful. And it beautifully illustrates how and why those ideas can become myths, and the beauty of letting go and being okay with starting over, again and again, no matter what age or milestone you’ve reached. After all, as Veselka writes, “There’s no shame in freedom.”
I tabbed so many passages in this beautifully-written book, and its messaging spoke to me in its simplicity. Our lives to do not have to be grand or “impressive” to be significant. At one point in the story, Cheyenne asks a man in Texas, “When did you get okay with being nothing?” And it’s this central theme of the story that gets me. None of us are actually nothing. But we can all get to a place of being okay with who we are, no matter what outside forces or opinions may tell us about our worth.
TW: rape, terminal illness, assisted dying
The Great Offshore Grounds is a family saga. Cheyenne and Livy are half-sisters — they have the same father and different mothers, but from birth were both raised by Kirsten, and they have never known the other mother or which mother is whose biological parent. On the day of their estranged father’s latest wedding, he hands them an envelope containing the name of their other mother, setting off a series of events that will change everything.
We follow multiple perspectives throughout the story: Cheyenne, Livy, Kirsten, and the girls’ unofficially adopted brother Essex are each grappling with finding themselves at a turning point, feeling purposeless, broke, and lost. Something that this book gets so right is the pressure to *DO SOMETHING*, “find your purpose,” and be successful. And it beautifully illustrates how and why those ideas can become myths, and the beauty of letting go and being okay with starting over, again and again, no matter what age or milestone you’ve reached. After all, as Veselka writes, “There’s no shame in freedom.”
I tabbed so many passages in this beautifully-written book, and its messaging spoke to me in its simplicity. Our lives to do not have to be grand or “impressive” to be significant. At one point in the story, Cheyenne asks a man in Texas, “When did you get okay with being nothing?” And it’s this central theme of the story that gets me. None of us are actually nothing. But we can all get to a place of being okay with who we are, no matter what outside forces or opinions may tell us about our worth.
TW: rape, terminal illness, assisted dying
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape and Terminal illness