On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves
ON THE ISLAND
BY TRACEY GRAVIS GRAVES
PUBLISHED: 2011
AVERAGE RATING: 4.14
346 PAGES
★★★☆☆
I’ve always been interested in stories that contains survival methods. Be it an apocalypse, a war or on a deserted island. That is why “On the Island” caught my attention.
“On the Island” is written by Tracey Gravis-Graves and is her first novel. It came out in 2011. Fun fact: After being declined 14 times by the publishing companies, Gravis-Graves published it on her own on the internet. And now it’s an international bestseller. That’s really cool!
Anna is a thirty year old english teacher with a fading relationship and a desire to get some space. T.J is a sixteen year old boy who’s just recovered from cancer. Anna is offered the job as his tutor throughout the summer in the Maldives. On their way to the Maldives, the plane crash-lands in the Indian Ocean, and they barely make it to a desserted island. There are a lot of challenges and obstacles on their task of surviving, but as the days turn to weeks and then months, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge is to live with a boy who is about to turn into a man.
When I read about this book, I had some mixed feelings about it. On one side, it sounded like a really cool story about surviving in harsh conditions. On the other side, that last sentence in the description made things seem a little bit off. I mean, you’re on a desserted Island with no signs of being rescued and have to make it on your own to survive. How in the world can a potential love interest be something that even strikes someone in that situation as a problem?
I was afraid that this would turn out to be a silly, overly-romantic love story (forbidden love on a desserted Island, I mean… the sound of that just does not get to me) with a badly placed desserted Island as an excuse. I was afraid the authour was thinking: Hell, how would the two of them end up together? Oh yeah, I’ll just put them on some Island together. Why not? Because for me, the most important thing with this story would be the survival on the Island.
But I decided to give it a shot, and as it turns out, the author has managed to get a very good balance between the love story and actually surviving on the Island. And it makes sense. I’m obviously not an expert, but for me, the plane-accident, the way they get food and water and all of the survival-parts of the story seems logical. Wich, as I told, was the most important for me.
This is, without doubt, a love-story. But it it’s not too cliché and I actually kind of liked it, even though romance really is'nt my genre at all. It's not a very long book either, so all in all I found this to be a nice break from my studies and I really don't regret reading it. It was very exciting to read about how they managed to survive, and their relationship is both understandable and sweet. I read that MGM has bought the movie rights, and I really hope that this will be a movie! It would be cool to see.
If I have to complain about anything, it would be that I felt that Anna as a character is a little… plain. She acts in logical ways and says things that makes perfect sense, but since we’re reading parts of the book as is we were in her head, I feel like I we should have been able to get a deeper sense of her feelings. I just feel that something’s missing there.
But I was surprisingly pleased with this book, it was a quick read and a nice break from my studies. I just heard there is a sequel of sorts, described as “On the Island 1.5”, and I’ll probably read that as well. And considering this is Garvis-Graves’ first book, It’s very good.
