Girl at Sea [Hardcover]

Maureen Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2007

Sometimes you have to get lost.

The Girl: Clio, seventeen, wants to spend the summer smooching her art-store crush, not stuck on a boat in the Mediterranean. At least she'll get a killer tan.

The Mission: Survive her father's annoying antics. Oh, also find some underwater treasure that could be the missing link to a long-lost civilization.

The Crew: Dad's absentminded best friend Martin, his scary girlfriend Julia, her voluptuous daughter Elsa . . . and then there's Aidan, Julia's incredibly attractive, incredibly arrogant research assistant.

What's going on behind Aidan's intellectual, intensely green eyes, anyway?

As Clio sails into uncharted territory she unveils secrets that have the power to change history. But her most surprising discovery is that there's something deeper and more mysterious than the sea—her own heart.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up—Clio Ford, 17, is an artist who has just landed a job at an art store that puts her right in the line of sight of her crush. Within minutes of landing this primo job, she learns that her mother has been awarded a fellowship that involves moving to Kansas for the summer; Clio will have to live with her father, whom she considers immature and selfish, on a yacht in Italy. Within pages, Clio is off on an excursion that involves her father (who is really working hard to make things right), his new girlfriend (an archaeology professor on a hunt), his girlfriend's daughter, a grad assistant, and her father's best friend. There is a secret shrouding this adventure. Through old letters that are found and snippets of conversation, readers figure out that the group is looking for something akin to the Rosetta Stone. Johnson does a great job of peppering enough interesting information and planting enough clues to keep the story moving along. Purchase for readers who enjoy lighthearted mystery and intrigue.—Emily Garrett, Armstrong Elementary School, Sachse, TX
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Who wouldn't want to spend the summer cruising the Mediterranean? Seventeen-year-old Clio, for one. It will ruin her plan to turn her crush into her boyfriend, and she'll be stuck with her dad. Things head downhill from the start of the cruise: her dad's new girlfriend is along; Clio must share a cabin with Elsa, the girlfriend's daughter; she's not allowed to use the Internet or a telephone; and no one will tell her the real purpose of the trip. Clio and Elsa quickly become friends, and eventually Clio determines that the trip has something to do with undersea archaeology. Then, Clio is knocked off guard by her attraction to an onboard research assistant. A whirlwind of mystery and action, friendship and romance, this is a perfect summer read for Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants fans. Booth, Heather

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperTeen (May 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006054144X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060541446
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,514,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maureen Johnson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Like a lot of people who end up writing books, she was always reading. This paid off in the end, but also resulted in her not playing any sports, so she is spectacularly uncoordinated, and is easily injured by harmless household objects, like endtables.

She studied writing and theatrical dramaturgy at Columbia University. Before she could spend all her days writing, Maureen served up hamburgers in the company of mad scientists and talking skeletons in New York, tended bar in Piccadilly Circus, nervously worked alongside live tigers in Las Vegas, and once got mixed up with the entire cast of a major West End musical.

Maureen lives in New York City, and when she is not writing, spends her time in a relentless pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee. If you know where it is, get in touch with her at once.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crazy, Fantastic Story, June 21, 2007

By 

Wantz Upon A Time Reviews (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl at Sea (Hardcover)

GIRL AT SEA is Maureen Johnson's best book yet, and that's really saying something, as anyone who has read her fantastic earlier novels will know. It's a mystery full of forgotten secrets from the past with travel, wonderful characters, romance, adventure, and so much more. The amazingly well-written page-turner has elements that will remind readers of bestselling adult books by big names like Dan Brown, but with a quirky charm and loveable main character all its own.

Clio Ford is a seventeen-year-old aspiring artist who is understandably unhappy when she has to give up her dream job at the local art store to spend her summer vacation on a boat in Italy, tagging along on one of her father's mysterious adventures. It's just like old times, when they traveled the world with the money from Div!, a board game that Clio and her father invented on a rainy trip to the beach. This time, however, this sort of zany adventure has lost much of its magic for her. She worries that it must be costing a fortune that her father doesn't have because a past business partner took off with most of the Dive! money.

Add that to the fact that Clio discovers she's also the unwilling addition to her father's date with his snarky new girlfriend, Julia, and you've got one unhappy teenaged girl. It's not all bad, though: she's had to leave her crush behind, but there may be an even better guy right on the Sea Butterfly. As bad as it seems when she finds out she's stuck on the boat, her time on board might not be half bad. After all, her father's crazy adventures were fun when she was twelve...right? But this expedition turns out to be unlike what she experienced before. There's a lot more in store than Clio--or anyone else--knows.

My only complaint with this book is how soon it ended! When the story ends, the key to the mystery has been found--but the mystery itself has yet to be solved. I really, really hope there'll be a sequel to this crazy, fantastic, adventurous story!

Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce
06/22/2007

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Girl at Sea, July 6, 2007

By 

Chelsie Lacny "Chel" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Girl at Sea (Hardcover)

This was a really good book for summertime... and I liked it much better than 13 Little Blue Envelopes, because I connected with the characters easier. I wouldn't come out and say this book was the greatest book I've ever read, but it was definitely worth my time. It kept me interested and I genuinely cared about Clio and what happened to her. Sure, I didn't agree with everything she did, but I still thought that this book was the perfect combination of fluff and seriousness. Definitely great.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Johnson Does It Again, June 15, 2007

By 

Clio Tandy (Mount Vernon, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl at Sea (Hardcover)

The book was amazing, my saving grace in a pile of failures I bought at the book store.

It details the adventures of Clio as she is forced from what could be a fantastic summer working side by side with her art store hottie, Ollie, to going along with her father on another one of his crazy schemes. This time, Clio and her father's other shipmates, family friend Martin, Clio's father's girlfriend, Julia, Julia's assistant, Aiden, and Julia's daughter, Elsa, will be on a yacht off the coast of Italy doing something that no one will tell her anything about.

Clio is, understandably, upset.

I found the book to be highly enjoyable and watching Clio try to deal with everything from her already frayed relationship with her father, to HIS relationship with Julia, to the extremely hush-hush reason they're on this modern day Gilligan's Isle waiting to happen, to the barbs exchanged between herself and the arrogant Aiden of Yale and Cambridge, to her friendship with Elsa especially when they both end up crushing on Aiden. Clio was extremely likeable, very understandable, and I was rooting for her and Aiden from their first interaction.

Although the real plot of the story got lost in the character relationships and took awhile to kick in, I still enjoyed it. I love Maureen Johnson's writing and I think she's an amazing author. Girl at Sea is a book I would recommend for anyone with some time on their hands and a love for summer novels.