On The Island Tour Stop

TITLE On The Island
AUTHOR Tracey Garvis Graves
PUBLICATION July 17, 2012 by Plume
READ July 18 - 19, 2012

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.

T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments - instead of his friends.

Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter. Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

A copy was provided by the publisher as part of the blog tour.

 

I don't review too many adult titles here on Alluring Reads, but after reading all of the hubbub I couldn't help but jump at the opportunity to take part in the On The Island blog tour. After reading it for myself I can say that I now know what all of the raving is about. Tracey Garvis Graves has weaved a story fully of desperation and forbidden romance that sucks you in and keeps you turning pages. High school teacher Anna is hired by a wealthy family to spend the summer with them on their family vacation on an island in the Maldives and act as a tutor to their son T.J. He is three months into remission from Hodgkin's Lymphoma and is quite behind in his schooling. When Anna and T.J. board a seaplane and head out to the island, things don't go quite as they had hoped. After their pilot suffers a heart attack they are lost at sea and forced to fend for themselves for three and a half years on an island.

My favorite part of this novel was that, not only do we watch as Anna and T.J. find ways to survive on the island but we also get to see how they readjust to civilization once they are rescued. They form a bond while stranded, in a situation such as theirs I wasn't surprised that it happened. It's a gradual romance and I was rooting for them the whole way. T.J. is sixteen when they get stranded so we essentially get to watch him become a man, and he is forced to do so quite quickly. I loved the strength that he had, not only had he just finished fighting cancer, but he never dwelled on the situation and adapted amazingly well. Rather than being someone that Anna had to take care of he was a partner and pulled his weight. Anna was also a fantastic character, though a bit less accepting of the situation, but hey, I would have freaked out too! Learning to survive under those conditions would be no easy feat but they were resourceful and admirably brave. There are some steamy scenes on the island which I felt were perfectly paced with the story and left me feeling a rush of excitement each time.

Once they return we see everyone struggle with the acceptance of their relationship. Of course it is seen as taboo since when they went missing he was 16 & she was 30 and his teacher. I knew that was something that would be difficult to face, but the way if affects so many aspects of their lives made it so very interesting. From the get go I was completely invested in T.J. and Anna and I needed to know their whole story. I was finished this story feeling completely fulfilled and like I went through the entire ordeal with them. The writing is spot on and the pacing wonderful, I can't say enough about how much I adored this novel.

 Tracey's Website / Twitter / Facebook

 Tracey Garvis-Graves is the author of On the Island and Covet. She lives in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa with her husband, two children, and hyper dog Chloe. She blogs at www.traceygarvisgraves.com using colorful language and a snarky sense of humor to write about pop culture, silly television shows, and her suburban neighborhood. You can e-mail her at traceygarvisgraves@yahoo.com. She’d love to hear from you.

As part of the On The Island blog tour, Plume is giving away 10 signed finished copies of On The Island. This giveaway is open to the US only, to enter just fill out the Rafflecopter below!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you for participating in the ON THE ISLAND Event! This week in addition to reviews and posts, select blogs are hosting a word from the author's favorite quotes in the book as a Scavenger Hunt! There is one quote from Anna and one from T.J. Visit each stop this week to find the hidden words (they will be numbered for order) and after July 22nd, submit your answer to the quotes here! Random winners for books and swag will be chosen and notified by July 29th.

Also, next week July 23-27, there will be even more events and chances to win the book and swag!

• Monday, July 23 at 8:00 pm CST - Chat with the author Tracey Garvis Graves! We will be chatting with the author on Savor Chat: http://www.savorchat.com/chat/on-the-island-chat Come join us! (You can sign in with twitter or facebook)
  
• Each day look at #ontheisland on twitter for random shout outs to win books and swag! @Tale_of_Reviews
• ON THE ISLAND released in bookstores Tuesday, July 10th! If you see the book in stores or 'in the wild' take a picture. Please tweet it and use hashtag #ontheisland. Or you can post it to facebook! Please submit twitter and facebook links of your post/tweet here!  All entries need to be submitted by July 29th.

This has been a part of the On The Island blog tour brought to you by AToMR.

To see all of the stops on this tour click here.