She Never Told Me About The Ocean by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta - Blog Tour Review

 

Today on Life Of A Nerdish Mum I am happy to be taking part in the blog tour for She Never Told Me About The Ocean by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta. A big thank you as always to the publisher and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours. 

She Never Told Me About The Ocean

Told by four women whose stories nest together, She Never Told Me About the Ocean is an  epic about a rite of passage that all humans undergo and none remember: birth. 

Eighteen-year-old Sage has been mothering her mother for as long as she can remember, and  as she arrives on the shores of adulthood, she learns a secret: before she was born, she had an  older brother who drowned. In her search to discover who he was and why nobody told her,  Sage moves to tiny Dragon Island where her mother grew up. There, she embarks on a quest to  learn the superstitions of the island, especially its myths involving her mother. Gathering  stories from Ilya, a legendary midwife who hires Sage as her apprentice; Marella, Sage’s  grieving mother who was named for the ocean yet has always been afraid of it; and Charon, the  Underworld ferrywoman who delivers souls to the land of the dead, Sage learns to stop  rescuing her mother and simply let go. But when her skill as Ilya’s apprentice enables her to  rescue her mother one final time, in a way that means life or death, Sage must shed her  inherited fears and become her own woman.

My Review

This is the first book I have read by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta and it definitely won't be the last! I'm going to have to find all her back catalogue to work through I enjoyed She Never Told Me About The Ocean so much. 

She Never Told Me About The Ocean is such a beautifully written book and the language is poetic and pulls you into a world of folklore and myths. I absolutely love learning about both of these things so this really spoke to me and I was fascinated. 

The characters are extremely real and the story is very character driven. I always love reading multiple POV books as you get an insight into more characters than just the main character. 

Overall a very compelling read and one I have recommended to friends. 

I gave this book 5 stars. 

About The Author

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta grew up in Austin, Texas. She holds literature degrees from Harvard, Georgetown, and the University of Texas at Austin and teaches writing for the Harvard Extension School and the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. She is the author of eight books: We Live in Boise, Energy: The Life of John J. McKetta Jr., Fear of the Deep, Fear of the Beast, Poetry for Strangers Vols. I and II, The Creative Year: 52 Workshops for Writers, and The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell. She Never Told Me About the Ocean is her first novel. 

 elisabethsharpmcketta.com

Don't Forget To Check Out The Rest Of The Tour