Raw Blue - Kirsty Eagar

I’d like to quickly apologise for the radio silence over the last week – our internet router died! As you can imagine, there was much distress and crying until it was back, but all is now fine and I’m very relieved to have access to the blog again! Normal service should resume from now...

Raw Blue – Kirsty Eagar

Pages: 280

Publisher: Catnip Books

Release Date: 1^st August 2012

Edition: UK paperback, purchased

Other Titles by this Author: Night Beach, Saltwater Vampires, Molasses

I have clear view of the surf and I feel an electric charge. It’s a glitter skin day. The ocean is a vivid emerald colour and the wind ruffles the waves faces so that they shatter the sunlight like glass.

Carly might be living but it’s not much of a life, working the late shifts in a kitchen in Manly, renting alone and trying to get by without being noticed. The only time she feels alive is when she’s out in the ocean, where she can forget about everything – forget her own dark secret – and enjoy the moment.

But Carly can’t surf forever.

I have heard some wonderful, wonderful things about Raw Blue, mostly from Carla’s review, and she was utterly right!

Kirsty Eagar has written some of the most gorgeously luminous descriptions of the ocean and surfing that I have ever read. They leaped off of the page and sent me straight to the choppy Australian coast and I didn’t want to leave. I developed a burning need to learn to surf despite my serious lack of sporting ability or co-ordination. To have a connection in the way that Carly does with the surf is something special and I hope I find something like that.

The pure happiness that surfing gives Carly is so genuine and intense. It is her escape from her mundane life and haunting past. The event that caused her to drop out of university, leave home and move to Manly, a suburb of Sydney, was heartbreaking. It had to be something serious and scarring enough for Carly to need to work herself around a daily surf. And it was. After the reveal, which was fairly early on, it wasn’t just forgotten. It had ramifications throughout the novel and it explained some of Carly’s actions and reactions perfectly.

Even with her desire to shut herself off from the world, Carly formed some surprisingly touching relationships. Possibly my favourite was her connection with fifteen-year-old fellow surfer Danny. The simplicity and honesty of it was exactly what she needed. And then Ryan came along. The relationship between him and Carly isn’t a traditional YA romance and I loved it for that. It’s a lot more grown-up, it’s real and there are problems and issues and nowhere near perfect. But it works. With this relationship came a sex scene that was more graphic than most in YA, but I think that Kirsty Eagar did it beautifully. It was tasteful and beautifully executed.

I really loved Raw Blue and I hope I can manage to get my hands on more by Kirsty Eagar!

For my 2012 Contemporary YA Challenge

Sophie