The Day Of The Wave by Becky Wicks
Publication date: May 1st 2015
Genres: Adult, Romance
Genres: Adult, Romance
Synopsis:
Isla and Ben were just sixteen when the Boxing Day tsunami tore through their beach resort in Thailand. Just days after forming a life-changing bond, both were missing and presumed dead. Unbeknown to each other and haunted by one of the biggest natural disasters in world history, Isla and Ben are living very different lives, until over a decade later when a chance encounter throws them back together.
Based on real life events, The Day of the Wave is a story of healing, learning to let go, and figuring out when to hold on with everything you have left.
Based on real life events, The Day of the Wave is a story of healing, learning to let go, and figuring out when to hold on with everything you have left.
Becky Wicks lives in Bali and scribbles books, and she’s mostly powered by coffee. Her first book in the Starstruck Series, Before He Was Famous recently reached #1 in Amazon’s Coming of Age and New Adult & College categories, and her three travel books, published by HarperCollins are online to make feet nice and itchy. Mostly though, she loves to write love stories. She blogs most days at beckywicks.com and always welcomes distractions on Twitter @bex_wicks. Especially if you have photos of cats.
Author links:
REVIEW
What do you do when everything you know, everyone you hold
near and dear to your heart, and (what seems like) the whole world is turned
upside down, torn apart? How do you cope
when you’re left scrambling with shreds of the life you had? How does the
tragedy change you?
For Isla and Ben, these questions – hypothetical’s that
humans occasionally ponder as they consider their place in the world and the
meaning of their lives – became the only thoughts in their minds after the
tsunami swept through Thailand on December 26, 2004. They both lost. Period, straight up, no
prettying-it-up... They lost. They lost
family. They lost faith. They lost friends. They lost each other.
And then life went on.
More than ten years later they randomly run into each other
and it all, the memories, pain, everything, it all comes back. This time they each need to face what
happened then in order to be able to move forward happily with their lives; and
it helps that they can face the troubles and terrors of that horrible day together. Toss in exes, new/old friends, well meaning
strangers, a backpacking thief, and a wise-eyed elephant and you’ve got The
Day of the Wave.
I was apprehensive about reading Amie Stuart’s new
novel. I just couldn’t decide whether
reading this story was something that I would be able to push through. I’d pick it up and think to myself “today is
the day!” and then nothing. Until one
day I finally buckled down, told myself I had to do it. I’ve read books that I’ve disliked
before. I’ve forced myself to read all
the way through books that within a few chapters of starting, I knew I was
going not going to like at all. I was
nervous that Day of the Wave was going to end up being one of them.
But then Isla’s pain and her fear caught at my heart and it
didn’t take long for me to realize that Ben used his work and even his
optimistic attitude to mask his lingering fear and guilt. More than a decade after the tsunami they
both struggled and fought (each in their own ways) to survive. And as I read I realized that that – the struggle, the pain, the hope
and desire for life, was the point. The story was about what they lost, it was
about what they had to do to survive. In
the end, they story was about that and so much more – because in the end Isla
and Ben don’t just survive, they live.
I don’t know that I can say that I love this book. Saying that doesn’t really explain how I
feel, perhaps a better way of describing it would be that the story touched my
heart. Yes. It touched my heart – because you don’t have
to have lived through a tsunami or other natural disaster to understand the
kind of loss that shatters you to a degree that you don’t know whether you can
survive it, or whether you even want to.
So yes, The Day of the Wave touched me and I recommend you read it, so
that it can touch you as well.
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