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You, Me & the Sea

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The island’s other inhabitants are less than welcoming. Fraser Sutherland is a taciturn loner who is not happy about sharing his lighthouse – or his precious coffee beans – and Lefty, his unofficial assistant, is a scrawny, scared lad who isn’t supposed to be there at all. The novel bowls along and kept me hooked, it is so very readable. For me some of the developing relationships, as they change and morph, perhaps didn’t feel quite convincing, but that is a minor quibble. Merrow lives in a remote coastal area of Northern California along with her father and her brother. They live on a dilapidated farm and it barely yields enough crops for them to get by. Her older brother, Bear, doesn't look out for her in the very least as he is a disturbed individual and treats her very cruelly. One day her father brings home an orphan, Amir. Amir is the son of his deceased wife's best friend, so he can't just let him go into foster care again. This thrills Merrow completely as she has wanted a friend and a playmate practically her whole life. Merrow and Amir spend blissful days exploring Horseshoe Bluff, the farm, swimming in the ocean, and avoiding Bear at all costs. As they get older, Amir slowly changes from being her best friend to something more while they both weather the many storms of that come into their lives. Meg Donohue's You, Me, and the Sea is a heartfelt story about family, friendship, the call of the ocean, and star-crossed love.

The setting of this remote and often hostile environment intensifies the raw emotions and attraction between Fraser and Rachel and I thoroughly enjoyed watching their relationship develop. Overall, You, Me, and the Sea is stunningly atmospheric story of tumultuous true love and how far one will go to protect family. Swear words, sexual references, hate speech, discriminatory remarks, threats, or references to violence I thought the plot was wonderful too. There’s drama and tension, quieter moments and heightened emotion so that I finished reading You, Me & The Sea feeling as if I’d experienced every emotion possible. This is such a wonderful love story but it is so much more besides. Elizabeth Haynes explores love, grief, depression, identity, feelings of inadequacy, violence and tenderness with absolute skill. It’s so hard to explain, but I felt I had lived and breathed this book rather than simply read it.This fear did not feel like the sort of thing that came and went; it felt like something that was meant to last, like a rope with a double knot. This is the tale of two people, one hiding from his past and one running from hers. Fraser is a recluse, a gruff, intimidating mammoth of a man living on the island in the lighthouse. He doesn’t seem to like people and prefers to be left alone. Rachel is running away from her past and when she is offered the opportunity to work on an isolated island away from everyone she jumps at the chance until she finds out she has to live with Fraser.

Meg Donohue has turned out a beautifully written, lushly and evocatively detailed and heart-rending book that was swirling with atmosphere and sea mist. I was captivated, devastated, and engrossed from beginning to end. Written in the first person POV of Merrow, an adult woman at a significant crossroads and recalling her childhood, which was peppered with a love of the land and ocean yet heartbreaking and cringe-worthy with unpredictable violence, humiliation, intentional neglect, and vicious cruelty perpetrated by her older brother upon her and her best friend, an orphaned boy of the same age who had come to live with her family as her father’s ward. The family was rather isolated and lived like hillbillies in a small rustic cabin in a small rural yet coastal area of California. Whilst there are a few minor characters such as the birders staying in the observatory, or Rachel’s Norwich based family, it is Rachel, Lefty and Fraser who hold the reader spellbound. The dynamics of their relationships ensure the reader has no free will of their own but simply has to accept them as the author portrays them. I worried about them the whole time I was reading. They broke my heart and filled it with hope. I absolutely loved the interplay between them and the developing romantic and sexual relationship between Rachel and Fraser. And You, Me & The Sea is surprisingly sexual. Often the physical side of relationships in writing feels contrived, but here it is fabulously created with intimacy and passion. I read You, Me & The Sea rather wishing I could be Rachel!Contributions should be travel related. The most helpful contributions are detailed and help others make better decisions. Please don’t include personal, political, ethical, or religious commentary. Promotional content will be removed and issues concerning Booking.com’s services should be routed to our Customer Service or Accommodation Service teams. Merrow is a young child living in Horseshoe Cliff with her older brother and her father. She has always loved the sea and that’s where she spends most of her time running away from reality. Her mother passed away but no one will tell her how it happened. Bear, her older brother, is extremely abusive when her dad is not around, so Merrow decides to spend her time exploring the cliff and the beach.

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