Sea ~ Heidi R. Kling

Sienna Jones has had a hard time dealing with the loss of her mother three years ago in a plane crash over the Indian Ocean. Nightmares and fears of the ocean and planes haunt her. So when her father asks Sienna to join his international relief team for two weeks of her summer vacation to help tsunami orphans cope with their losses, she thinks he must be kidding or crazy or both. But wanting to help wins out over her fears, and she makes the long and frightening trek to Indonesia.
What she finds there is the most handsome boy she’s ever seen – Deni. He’s mysterious and brooding. Everything about him and the way Sienna feels about him is intense. Their connection is instant and true, so when he hears word that his father may have survived the awful tsunami after all, Sienna doesn’t hesitate to run away with him to the epicenter of the tsunami disaster. She knows about the kind of hope that’s driving Deni, and she wants to see him through whatever he’ll find back home. She knows they’re taking a huge risk, but she doesn’t expect that what they find might break both their hearts… {from book cover}

I’ve had a hard time writing this review, because I have a hard time looking at this book objectively. It brings far too many emotions to the surface for me to see this as “just a book”. I shall now try to push all of that aside and give an honest critique of the book.
Sienna is well written as a girl who is deep in grief and unwilling and/or unable to deal with it. Once she begins to talk about her mom, it is as if an enormous weight has been lifted off her shoulders. Deni is so authentic and so layered that I simultaneously felt like I knew everything about him but also that there was so much more to discover about him. Their instantaneous bond is very intense and very necessary for both of them.
Probably the best aspect of this book is that the writing is so detailed and so accurate without becoming lengthy in descriptions. As I read, I felt the stifling heat, I heard the pouring rain, I felt the pounding drumbeats. There’s a perfect portrayal of Sienna’s shock when she discovers why you never, under any circumstances, use your left hand for anything like eating or greeting people or accepting gifts. (Seriously, don’t do it; it’s just rude and disgusting and you’ll offend half the world. Good luck with that, left-handed Westerners.) And the kids at the orphanage? Words do not exist that can accurately convey exactly how grateful I am to Heidi Kling for painting such a magnificent and genuine picture of orphans around the world. This is spot on, from their smiles to their tears and everything in between.
As much as I love both Sienna and Deni, I struggled with their relationship. I bought the connection between them and how important they were to each other, but I just wasn’t sold on it as a romance. I might be a little cynical, though, based on my experiences with boys like Deni. But I was very much passionate about them staying together. Their relationship, from the first page to the last, was perfectly executed. I felt that everything that happened throughout the course of the book was leading to the events on the last page, so any other ending would have felt forced. There is a beautiful use of bookending in this story that I adore just for the fact that it’s there (plus the bookends themselves are adorable). I’d love to talk about that in depth, but I can’t because, uh, major spoilers involved. Though I will say it’s not bookending the actual book, just an aspect of the story that’s important and… oh, just read it and see for yourself!
This is a beautiful story about a beautiful girl who learns to hold onto hope and love above all else.

Published: 2010 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Pages: 323