This rom-com debut has the fierce girl energy of the movie Booksmart, blended with the awkwardness of Kelly Quindlen’s Late to the Party, topped with a thrilling international meet-cute a la Love and Gelato. Olivia Schwartz has a plan. It’s even color-coded. And the plan is a perfect SAT score, a prestigious college, and a straight path towards her dream of becoming a doctor. The last thing she wants to do—the summer before her senior year of high school, no less—is go on a cruise. Especially with her parents, younger brothers, and all the unspoken things between them since her older brother’s death so many years ago. Then Olivia meets Sebastian. He’s everything she’s charming, exciting, willing to take risks and run with them. For the first time, Olivia feels like she can have fun... But there’s a lot bubbling up under the surface on this cruise, and when past secrets begin to come to light, Olivia must face all the truths that she’s ignored about herself, Sebastian, her brother, the past she thought she understood, and the future she’s always planned.
Plot:
Olivia Schwartz is Type A to the max. With her fifteen-year plan for how to become a cardiac doctor by the time she was 30, Olivia needed a way to stand out even more than her 99% percentile perfect SAT score. Entering a research contest with her friend, Olivia was flabbergasted when her parents sprung a last-minute cruise on her. Finding herself on what is essentially a floating city, The Regal Island SS NY Sea, is a seven-day cruise around the tropics, to give the family a long-needed vacation. This cruise is special due to its children zone which provides personal aid for Olivia’s younger twin brothers who are on the autism spectrum. Even though Olivia is probably more qualified, given the amount of research she has done for them. After losing her older brother days before her eleventh birthday from a heart attack, Olivia has become a doomsday bomb, always looking at the worst-case scenarios for the twins, and herself. Thus, why do her parents think she needs a cruise, even inviting her childhood friend, Jules along with her family - thinking this will be good for Olivia. Jules is not like Olivia expected, into drugs and always has a flask on her, Jules insists they find themselves a crew to hang out with for the week. Meeting the boys, Olivia was instantly drawn to Sebastian. A fellow music lover, Sebastian was a dreamboat of a guy, interested in Olivia for her brain, and allowed her to talk about Logan, the brother her parents seem to have forgotten. Sebastian challenged Olivia to take the risk and live in the moment, something Logan would have also wished for her to do. With a cruise expedition to a shipwreck site off of Antigua, a country Logan promised to take her to one day, Olivia realizes there's more than this ship can offer besides cheesy NYC stuff and expensive expeditions. It offers the opportunity for love, to live in the moment, to connect to her past, and experience heartbreak for the first time.
Thoughts:
Lauren Kay starts their writing career with this banger of a YA novel. Taken from the first-person perspective of Olivia, we get a courageous smarty-pants, who despite always thinking of the worst outcomes, is trying to give life a change. Within this story, we kind of get two Olivias; Olivia who is dealing with the emotions of her family life, and trying to ensure that she does not forget Logan, despite feeling like her family has. Using her future in a way to save him, as her reason for becoming a doctor is to figure out what killed Logan at such a young age. This family dynamic and family history made the story emotionally interesting, although I wish Kay gave us more Logan stories throughout the novel. It seems as if Olivia only reflected on him a bit throughout the novel, where more history about their relationship could have made it more emotionally devastating, as Kay kind of breezed through the depression that Olivia probably went through for years after Logan’s death. Plus the issue of feeling like her parents replace Logan with the twins? So much more emotion could have come out of that. Now the second Olivia (aka Liv) is our love-at-first-sight, romantic girl, who after three days on the cruise with Sebastian, was calculating how they could make a long-distance relationship work. My girl, Olivia, come on! You hardly know the guy, a statement Jules thankfully said throughout the novel. In a cringy way, we got to see Olivia fall hard for a guy she barely knows, and despite his winning personality, he made her open up while keeping himself closed. The love bomb was real, but so was Olivia not being able to read signs, and where it was entertaining to read, you honestly just felt bad for our naive girl for falling hard for a player. With these two Olivia storylines running parallel, it made the book an easy read, and where I do not dock Kay for these typical plot points, I just wish she dove more into the emotional side of the family more, and a little bit less on the perfection Sebastian in Olivia’s eyes.
not to overshare, but they aren’t the ‘fun’ fingers lol but they’re also not her drawing fingers for archery! it’s her pinky and ring finger, she got a little too enthusiastic while working out 😂
when we travel i do a lot of hanging out with the partners of teammates, eating out, going to her shoot days obviously (i never miss a comp day), i go to a lot of her training sessions (i kind of just really enjoy being in her general proximity tbh), i go hiking, and on her off days we do a lot of sightseeing. one of my favourite things to do i just find a coffee shop and people watch for a while. i also work on the go most of the time. it’s a good time! - agf
PHEW! Good to know the fun fingers were spared! Lol. Those are too important :)
Is it going to hurt her in the season that she's injured or nah?
Also, I read this really fast the first time and I read it as "eating HER out" and not "eating out" and I was like "ALRIGHT FUN TIMES ON THE ROAD!" hahaha but then I doubled back cuz it didn't click that you thought the fingers was oversharing and then said that. Turns out it was less explicit than initially thought. "I enjoy being in her general proximity". THAT'S GAY YOUR HONOR! We love to see it.
