Review: Seven Tears into the Sea

Seven Tears into the Sea by Terri Farley

publisher: Simon & Schuster

released: April 2005

paperback, 288 pages

intented audience: Young adult

rating:


Description from bn.com:
Beckon the sea,

I'll come to thee....

Shed seven tears,

perchance seven years....

At the age of ten, Gwen Cooke had a strange encounter with a boy with dark, slightly tilted eyes. He came to her on the beach, whispered strange words in her ear, and then disappeared. Shortly thereafter, her family moved away from their seaside home and Gwen never saw the boy again.

Now seventeen, Gwen is returning to her childhood home. Her nana asked her to come. But Gwen knows it's time to go back for another reason: She yearns for the sea. Perhaps the sea itself is calling to her. Perhaps the memory of the boy and his haunting words are drawing her back to the place they met. Perhaps it's time for her to face her destiny.

Review: Reviewing an older one this week! This one literally fell into my lap while checking stuff in at the library. The cover caught my eye right away and after reading the back cover, I just knew it had to come home with me! A mysterious boy on the beach whispering an eerie poem in her ear and it draws her back to the sea years later---oh, yeah, definitely a story right up my alley. There was alot that I really liked about this story. It had alot of sweetness to it, with the relationship between Gwen and her grandmother. Early on, I discovered the story would revolve around the mythological creature, the Selkie. Definitely intriguing and kept me reading all the way through to find out what was really going on and who each character was on a deeper level than they seemed at first glance. With some characters, I was alittle disappointed---some of them I felt were not fleshed out enough to really understand what was going on beneath the surface. I did like the main character, Gwen, she was very real and I especially like that she was on a bit of a quest for courage.

On the other end (and I fully propose that this may have just been me and my own personal quirk), I just couldn't get into the whole selkie thing. I admit I didn't know much about the selkie legend, but from what I understood they are people who shapeshift into seals. Now, give me a beautiful man that magically shapeshifts into a sea lion and back,and I'm all for it...that would be cool! But a guy who peels off a sea lion skin and leaves it lying around for someone to steal (which according to legend is how you keep a selkie from being able to return to the sea), weeell...to be honest that concept kind of gave me the willies. Not to mention the selkie character was alittle overbearing and downright pushy at times. I just couldn't get a connection there.

The story as a whole was good. If anyone reading this has read this one, I'd love to hear your thoughts!!