Customer Reviews

Girl at Sea

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

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.

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.

Landlubbers and sea lovers alike will enjoy taking a trip with this Girl At Sea. Maureen Johnson once again successfully blends comedy and drama to create an intriguing, realistic story.

The Girl in question is Clio, who wears her heart and her scars on her sleeve. When she was eleven years old, she and her father created a board game called Dive! that took off.

A few years later, so did her father.

Fast forward five years. Now a high school junior, Clio was gearing up to work at a cool art supply store when her father contacts her. He wants her to come with him on a ten-week trip to the Mediterranean, but he won't tell her exactly where or why they're going.

Reluctantly, she goes along, only to discover they aren't alone. She must bunk with a sassy Swedish-English girl named Elsa whose mother is assisting Clio's father with his research. Her father's best friend Martin and a college boy named Aidan are also on board. As Clio's travels take her farther from home, they may or may not bring her closer to her father - and to herself.

Clio is a remarkable character. She's artsy. She's feisty. She's cool, but she doesn't know it. (That may just make her cooler.) She knows what she likes but isn't quite sure what she wants. She has a boldness about her, yet she's not really impulsive. Clio has a backbone, and even when she's vulnerable, she fights to stand on her own two feet. Her unique streak is a mile wide and she's got a knack for witty comebacks. I absolutely love her voice. Johnson's distinctive writing style really makes Clio shine.

Undeniably entertaining, Girl at Sea will not only please Maureen Johnson's loyal readers but should also be appreciated by anyone searching for a witty narrative and a memorable journey.

The summer before Clio's senior year is shaping up to be nearly perfect. First, there's her job at Galaxy Art Supply. Not only is Galaxy a place where she can indulge her love of art, but six-foot-five, shaggy-haired, vintage-dressed Ollie is employed there. Ollie and Clio aren't dating yet, but if Clio has anything to say about it, it's just a matter of time.

All of that changes when Clio's mother, a restorer at the Philadelphia Art Museum, drops a bombshell: She has won a fellowship that will pay off her student loans and give her a salary at the same time. It will involve doing work she loves --- restoring 16th-century paintings. What's the catch? The work has to be done in Kansas. Without consulting Clio, her mom has made an executive decision. Clio's father, Ben, wants to take her to Italy over the summer, and Clio is going whether she likes it or not.

Clio knows she sounds like a petulant brat when she thinks about it. How many other kids get the chance to go to amazing foreign countries over the summer? But other kids don't have her father. Ben is the source of a lot of angst in Clio's life. He has dragged her all over the world on weird "educational" opportunities. Because of him, Clio lives in a house that leans five inches to one side and has a tattoo that looks like a zipper running around one arm.

When she arrives in Italy, Clio finds that her dad is acting secretively. Instead of a house or a villa, they're spending the summer on a yacht with Ben's girlfriend Julia, her curmudgeonly, green-eyed research assistant Aidan, her Swedish dairy goddess daughter Elsa, and the only sane one of the bunch, Ben's best friend Martin. Clio is put to work immediately, cooking for everyone on the boat, but all the chicken korma recipes in the world can't stave off her curiosity about why they're on the boat and why her dad insists on code names and secretive behavior. The only person more frustrating to Clio than her dad is Aidan. He's snobby and thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and he'd be so easy to hate if he weren't so intense.

Clio decides that her father, Martin, Julia and Aidan can't keep her in the dark forever, and she's willing to take a few risks to find out what the adults are diving for all day long. What she discovers about herself, however, might be even more important than what's on the bottom of the ocean.

Travel to Europe once again with Maureen Johnson, who will make you feel like you too are spending a very hot summer on a yacht miles from shore. Half the fun of this book is watching a historical mystery concerning a powerful stone unfold around thoroughly modern Clio. All the people here are interesting and real, even though you might not want to hang out with them in real life. Stuck in your hometown for the summer? Pick up GIRL AT SEA and travel to lands an ocean (or two) away. Just be careful of the jellyfish.

--- Reviewed by Carlie Webber

Everything is going great for Clio. She finally gets the job of her dreams working with the guy of her dreams when she gets the news that she has to spend the summer in Italy with her father, on a boat. Most people would be happy about that but as far as she's concerned, it's the worst thing that could happen to her. She's stuck out at sea with a group of strangers on what seems to be one of her fathers rediculous schemes with no way of communicating with the outside world. Nobody will tell her what is going on and why exactly they are there, so she takes matters into her own hands to find the truth. It turns into a fantastic sea adventure that flips her world upside down. It's funny, exciting, clever and romantic. A great read.

Maureen Johnson's GIRL AT SEA tells of Clio, a teen who wants to spend the summer evolving a romance, not stuck on a boat in the Mediterranean. Add to the mix her father's scary girlfriend and an arrogant research assistant and you have a satisfyingly complex novel which many unexpected twists and turns of plot, perfect for leisure reading.

Maureen Johnson has a gem with GIRL AT SEA. The book is unpredictable (especially the final chapters!) and original. It's definitely worth a second read.

I wanted to like this book. It was recommended by a librarian who scored a home run with her tip to read Dramarama by E. Lockhart. This book, however, was a disappointment.

As soon as the protagonist got what was obviously her dream job, I knew something would get in the way. I tried to like her, but her self-absorption (yes, teens are supposed to be self-absorbed, but the navel gazing got to be way too much) and lies were frustrating.

The father character just made me cringe. The sub-plot with Elsa and crushes (further details could be considered spoilage) felt off, I didn't buy that Elsa would act the way she did.

And the ending? Well, let's just say there isn't a lot of closure. I wanted a lot more history too, considering that the novel opened with an historical letter.

I'd try another of Maureen Johnson's books, but this one was frustrating and disappointing.

I am a huge Maureen Johnson fan, and her tweets always make me smile. I love the Suite Scarlet series so far but when I read 13 Little Blue Envelopes... I doubted the great Jar Keeper (twitter joke, sorry). I enjoyed the story, but I could never suspend my disbelief enough to believe that the underage main character's parents were ok with her going on this crazy overseas mission with no information whatsoever. Maybe I missed the part where she explained about that. I felt uncomfortable having these tiny doubts about MJ, so I have embarked on a goal to read her other books.

I read this book in an escapist's dream. During the recent snowpocalypse, I was physically nestled in 5 layers of clothes and my puff blanket on our couch. Mentally, however, I was on a yacht in the Mediterranean. I was cruising with Clio and her father, trying to figure out why we were on this ship and what precisely her father was looking for. Clio is an amazing personality, and I loved watching her backstory develop. I'm sorry-- there are a LOT of twists in this novel (both plot and character development related), so that's why I'm being kind of cagey. I wouldn't want to rob you of the opportunity to discover for yourself exactly how Clio got her tattoo, what exactly is up with Julia, or why Maureen Johnson is so terrified of jellyfish. I mean, I knew MJ was afraid of jellyfish, but after reading this book I may be a little afraid of jellyfish too.
Some readers seem to thin that Clio is whiny, which may be a valid opinion. Even she points out that she sounds like a brat for complaining about going to Italy for the summer. However, the main point of the whining and the Main Conflict of the novel is that there is this conflict that develops between parents and late teens if parents don't realize their kid's need for autonomy. Clio had plans for the summer-- she was going to work in an art store with her crush. And then out of the blue her parents force her to adjust her schedule and plan her summer out extensively without ever consulting her. If you can't remember how annoying that is, please, stop and try for a second.
This book is primarily a character development book, but there were still plenty of plot-related points that kept me (a plot reader) interested. Mostly we see how Clio, her father, and Aidan all grow as individuals and improve their relationships. The rest of the characters are fairly complex, but they aren't so complex that they clutter the story.
The only thing holding me back from giving this book a 9 is... my snobbery. When I read the Suite Scarlett series, I read a LOT of the same wit, humor, and random kitsch that I love about Maureen's Twitter posts. I think she's really found a voice that is completely and uniquely her own, and THAT's what I love about Suite Scarlett and her portion of Let It Snow. Don't get me wrong-- she was developing that tone in this book. I just feel she may have been holding it back a little, maybe to be a little more mainstream, whereas now she may know she can wave her Quirk-Flag high. But this book is still a must-read for MJ fans!