Blog Tour: On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves (Review & Give-away)

Today WinterHaven Books has the opportunity to review On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves as part of A Tale of Many Reviews blog tour. Thank you AToMR for allowing us to participate!

On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves
Publisher: Plume Publishing
Publication Date: July 10, 2012
Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island.

Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter. Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

My Thoughts
Love love loved this book!!

I did not expect to feel this passionate about On the Island going into this read. I was planning to just breeze through a summer-y type book with mild interest. Well, that surely didn’t happen here! On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves was amazing! It’s one of those books that render you useless the entire time you’re lost in the pages. I wanted to give it all of my attention because it definitely captured all of my heart.

In this novel, Anna takes a tutoring job for the summer where she’ll be helping sixteen year old T.J. catch up with his school work after falling behind due to an illness. They’re slated to catch up with his family at a vacation spot and board a charter plane toward Maldives, but an unexpected accident leaves them stranded on one of the twelve hundred small islands in a vast area. Their struggle to survive and obtain food, water and shelter is not the only challenge they face. After what seems like an endless and hopeless wait for a rescue, which spans from months into years, these two people begin to battle the feelings they develop for one another despite the thirteen year age difference.

This was such a powerful story that was told in multiple perspectives between Anna and T.J. I’ve seen many authors struggle in making alternating POVs work for their story, but Tracey executed this narrative style with perfection. I could vividly imagine what Anna and T.J. had to overcome physically, emotionally and psychologically throughout this ordeal. My heart went through a wide range of emotions for these two including hope, despair, happiness and oh so much angst.

Graves did a masterful job of pacing this story and it never felt rushed in any way considering it took into account a multiple year ordeal. I’m always on the fence about epilogues, and I’ve even gone so far as removing a star or two for epilogue misuse. Not in this case. I wanted to add a few stars because Tracey’s ability to catapult us into these characters’ futures provided the perfect closure to this journey.

What I love most about this book is that it started off as a self-published novel and worked its way up from there solely based on great storytelling. Hats off to Tracy Garvis Graves for writing such a spectacular book about survival and hope that gained traction by word of mouth and exploded into the success it is today. Beautiful book that I hear is now being optioned for a movie… I’ll be buying a ticket to that show and that’s for sure! Once again… Loved it!

4.5 Snowflakes

On the Island Book Give-away
Ten (10) signed print copies will be given away by Plume Books. The give-away ends July 28, 2012 and the terms and conditions are listed in Rafflecopter. Please note, it is the publisher’s responsibility to ensure that the winners get their books, not WinterHaven Books. Thank you and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hold on! I’ve got more to tell you!

Be sure to check out the rest of the blogs taking part in this awesome tour here.

This week in addition to reviews and posts, select blogs are hosting a word from the author's favorite quotes in the book as a Scavenger Hunt! There is one quote from Anna and one from T.J. Visit each stop this week to find the hidden words (they will be numbered for order) and after July 22nd, submit your answer to the quotes here! Random winners for books and swag will be chosen and notified by July 29th.

WinterHaven’s Scavenger Hunt Word: don't ~ This is Anna's quote, word #3

Check each stop daily to see who else is a Scavenger Hunt host! Good luck!

Also, next week July 23-27, there will be even more events and chances to win the book and swag!

Monday, July 23 at 8:00 pm CST - Chat with the author Tracey Garvis Graves! We will be chatting with the author on Savor Chat: http://www.savorchat.com/chat/on-the-island-chat Come join us! (You can sign in with twitter or facebook) Each day look at #ontheisland on twitter for random shout outs to win books and swag! @Tale_of_Reviews

ON THE ISLAND released in bookstores Tuesday, July 10th! If you see the book in stores or 'in the wild' take a picture. Please tweet it and use hashtag #ontheisland. Or you can post it to facebook! Please submit twitter and facebook links of your post/tweet here! All entries need to be submitted by July 29th.

About the Author: Tracey Garvis Graves

Tracey Garvis-Graves is the author of On the Island and Covet. She lives in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa with her husband, two children, and hyper dog Chloe. She blogs at www.traceygarvisgraves.com using colorful language and a snarky sense of humor to write about pop culture, silly television shows, and her suburban neighborhood. You can e-mail her at traceygarvisgraves@yahoo.com. She’d love to hear from you.

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