Bookalicious

From GoodReads: Haunted by recurring nightmares since her mother’s disappearance over the Indian ocean three years before, fifteen-year old California girl Sienna Jones reluctantly travels with her psychiatrist father’s volunteer team to six-months post-tsunami Indonesia where she meets the scarred and soulful orphaned boy, Deni, who is more like Sea than anyone she has ever met.

She knows they can’t be together, so why can’t she stay away from him? And what about her old best friend-turned-suddenly-hot Spider who may or may not be waiting for her back home? And why won’t her dad tell her the truth about her mother’s plane crash? The farther she gets from home, the closer she comes to finding answers.

And Sea’s real adventure begins.

Sea is a sad book. Sea is a heart-wrenching tear out your eyeballs in anticipation novel. Sea is hope-filled and hope-dashing. Sea is a beautiful rendition of a disaster. Sea is everything I thought it would be with so much more. This book should be on your pre-order list. It describes the lives of children in the aftermath of the Indonesian Tsunami in such a realistic fashion that several times I had to delay reading until the tears in my eyes cleared up.

Kling paints a masterful image of a third world country after a disaster and the lives of the children who are left with nothing. The characters are full of life, I could live and breathe the rotten vegetation and polluted air. I could see the colorful scarves on the heads of the beautiful brown skinned Muslim girls. I could visualize mosques and motors and the streets of uniform chaos.

Sienna (Sea) has a sad story of her own. Her Mother went down trying to save the world in a small airplane and her Father may be moving on with the woman who treated her for PTSD afterward. We start on Sea’s birthday in the kitchen with her Oma, Tom (who brings the laughs through-out the book), Vera and Sea’s dad surprising her with tickets to Indonesia to work with Team Hope at an orphanage for Tsunami children.

I’ll let you find out what a mandi is on your own. Just be certain my pampered American tail wouldn’t last a day in Indonesia. I was grossed out and concerned for the children all at the same time. If you are humanity conscious at all you should give this book a go.

If you like Beth Kephart, or Laurie Halse Anderson you will love Heidi R. Kling!