It was pretty good, mediocre/unsatisfying ending

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I tend to fall in love with books with lyrical writing styles, and The Sea Is Salt and So Am I didn’t disappoint in this regard. The setting of West Finch, a tiny town in Maine that is literally at risk of collapsing due to climate change, gifts the whole novel a semi-magical edge, which balances nicely with harsher realities of car accidents, financial troubles, and SATs (every high school student’s worst enemy). Although the narration style barely changed between the three POVs, it was enjoyable to explore, and I particularly loved how Hartt employed sentence fragments in unconventional ways.

But this mysteriousness also frustrated me at times. For example, details about the characters’ pasts were gradually revealed, but I wish these reveals had employed more “telling” and less “showing” as I often had to reread scenes to decipher the subtleties. I also had a difficult time getting invested in the main characters, especially Harlow, who was often cruel to Ellis, her supposed best friend, and Tommy, Ellis’s brother. Honestly, I didn’t like the relationship between Harlow and Tommy at the beginning or the end of the novel, despite the major shift that occurred by the latter. Also, I still don’t fully understand what happened between Harlow, Tommy, and Ruby, Tommy’s former artistic friend who drifted apart but still cares deeply about him. The reason for their separation was one of the big reveals at the end of the novel, but it fell flat to me, and it disparaged Harlow more.

“I tell her things I don’t believe. The world isn’t ending. Things don’t always get worse.”

That said, I could still sympathize with each character. Harlow and Ellis were both invested in “The Plan”—a fantasy entailing both of them acing the SATs and Ellis getting an athletic scholarship so that they can attend the same college—to the point of unhealthiness, and Tommy was often excluded from their aspirations. The characters were self-centered, but so many teenagers are, and I appreciated how the characters called one another out for their selfishness and irresponsibleness. The three of them were well-developed—even if unlikeable—and that’s a sign of skillful writing.

The Sea Is Salt and So Am I is the pretty, vulnerable kind of book that confuses you but moves you at the same time. Despite an unsatisfying conclusion, the characters are complex enough to revisit just to parse their actions and motivations, and West Finch is the perfect place for such quiet destruction to ensue.