***The Starry-Eyed Revue***: deserted island

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the awesome ladies at The Broke and the Bookish. Apparently, they are overly fond of list-making and love to share their bookish lists with the rest of us book nerds. =) We're game.

This week's topic is the Top Ten Characters We Would Want With Us On A Deserted Island:

April's Picks:

Jen added her's first so I had to go ahead and be fancy too! I used a shot from our vacation in Bermuda this year. So those are my picks.. and here is why. :)

Katniss - She has mad skills and will catch me dinner
TJ - He's been there, done that. He knows what he's doing and he's pretty to look at.
Lynn - That woman knows a thing about sanitizing water. Who wants the shits? Not this girl.
Ash - He's all cold and shit! I want ice cubes in my fruity drink I plan on concocting out there.
Darla - That woman can make anything out of nothing. I need a bitching shelter.
Harry Potter - He's full of magic. I need entertainment.
Tinkerbell - She can fly and check out the island for me while I sit on my ass and catch a tan
Juliette - She is strong. No climbing trees for coconuts here. She can punch it and presto!
Sean Kendrick - Okay, maybe not him per say but his narrator. I could listen to him forever
Grimalkin - A pet to keep me company. He's a bit cocky, but he's a cat. #catperson

Clearly I gave this a lot of thought and I probably need a life. lol. :)

Jen's Picks:

I'm not gonna lie, I seriously thought about loading up my deserted island with just my favorite leading men, but I know me, and I'd get pretty bored with all that testosterone...after awhile, anyway. ;0) So, I included some of my favorite heroines, too, to keep me company. In no particular order:

Anna, Lola & Isla (Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door, Isla and the Happily Ever After) I figure are kind of like a package deal. They're all just too cute and funny and adorable not to have along on this adventure, though I'm sure they'll all miss their own leading men. Veronica Mars (The Million Dollar Tan Line) is a given. She's quirky and the girl I'm most likely to be besties with on the island. Josh Bennett (The Sea of Tranquility) will be able to make us all furniture. :) Hermione Granger (Harry Potter) can magic us anything to the island, but I won't let her Apparate us back to civilization until I've had my fun. :P Wesley Ayers (The Archived) and his guy-liner are purely for my own enjoyment. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games) can scout out the island for us and help keep us all safe. I'll admit that Noah Shaw (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer) is here for the eye candy and the accent, but also for the beautiful words: “You can’t hurt me the way you think you can. But even if you could? I would rather die with the taste of you on my tongue than live and never touch you again. I’m in love with you, Mara. I love you. No matter what you do.” I regret nothing. Joe Fontaine (The Sky is Everywhere) will keep us entertained with his musical genius, as well as the bat bat bat of his eyelashes. (I have a thing for eyes...I'm an eye-girl. It should be noted that my hubby has fantastic blue-gray eyes and long, beautiful lashes.) Nikolai Lantsov (Siege and Storm) will keep everyone on their toes with his antics and will provide much-needed levity. And Captain Chaol Westfall (Throne of Glass) and his handsome yet serious demeanor is here to keep everyone in line, and above all else, to keep me company. :D

Which fictional characters would you prefer to be marooned on a desert island with? Be sure to share a link to your TTT post so we can visit!

Labels: characters we love, deserted island, top ten tuesday

Title: Searching for Sky
Author: Jillian Cantor
Series: N/a
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's
Publication Date: May 13, 2014
Source: from publisher via Netgalley
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Sky and River have always lived on Island, the only world they’ve ever known. Until the day River spots a boat. Across Ocean, in a place called California, Sky is separated from River and forced to live with a grandmother she’s just met. Here the rules for survival are different. People rely on strange things like cars and cell phones. They keep secrets from one another. And without River, nothing makes sense. Sky yearns for her old life where she was strong and capable, not lost and confused. She must find River so they can return to Island, but the truth behind how they ended up there in the first place will come as the biggest shock of all

When I saw Searching for Sky go up on Netgalley, I was interested right away. The description had me with “lived on Island”. I have this thing for story lines involving being stuck on islands. I read a book when I was a little kid, and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called, but I loved it and it was about this kid surviving alone on an island. Plus, I watched Gilligans Island growing up, even though it was kinda old school even back then.

I’ll be honest though, In Searching for Sky, there isn’t much island life going on. Sure there is some, and there are flash backs of how things were, but for the most part, this book takes place in California. It very much centers on Sky learning how to live in the real world. I expected this, and I loved every minute.

I can see how it may be slow going for some readers once the excitement of leaving island passes, but I found everything after just as fascinating. Sky has no clue how to live in this new world. She doesn’t know what a toilet is, clothes, anything. She only knows what her mother has told her. She’s thrust into the home of her grandmother, whom she has no recollection of. It’s hard for both of them, and their relationship was just heartbreaking. As a huge fan of contemporaries these days, I enjoyed watching Sky work through all these things. Her feelings for life off the island, the reasons she ended up on Island in the first place, her feelings for River (The boy she grew up with), and so many other things.

Ahh and the reason they were on Island, that’s a doozy, and I’ll admit I had my suspicions, but whoa, how it all went down was a bit different than I had imagined. So interesting and cray cray.

This story left me with damp eyes and feelings of hope. I really loved Searching For Sky. It snuck up and surprised me. It’s awesome when books do that, I knew I would like it but it surpassed my expectations.

About the author:

Jillian Cantor has a BA in English from Penn State University and an MFA from The University of Arizona. She is the author of award-winning novels for teens and adults including, most recently, the critically acclaimed MARGOT, which was a Library Reads pick for September 2013 and also featured in O the Oprah Magazine, People, Ladies Home Journal, and Time.com. Her next book for teens, SEARCHING FOR SKY, will be published by Bloomsbury US on 5/13/14 and Bloomsbury UK on 7/3/14. A Scholastic edition will also be sold in Scholastic book clubs and fairs in the 2014-15 school year. Born and raised in a suburb of Philadelphia, Jillian currently lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons.

Find Jillian:

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