A book that tp draws you in from the opening pages .Michael the husband suggests to his wife Juliet that they leave their daily life grab their two kids and sail make the boat their home,Two young kids leave their home her initial reaction is no but slowly she agrees
I love how the story is told in both their voices their issues in their marriage her personal problems dealing with motherhood ,marriage a woman’s role seem torn from real life,Highly recommend this literary read.#netgalley#theseawife

A tour de force...

I did not expect a book about a family's sea voyage to be the powerhouse that this novel is. First and foremost this is a story about relationship. It scales the weight of modern familial, political, and societal woes. Yet, in all the burden this story rains on its characters, it never neglects to also honor their triumphs. In this way, Sea Wife offers a truly human exploration into our own roles as modern-day mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors in our ever more complicated world.

If all that that isn't enough to convince you, Sea Wife also offers an experimental structure, realistic characters, and a tension-based plot without ever once losing an ounce of my attention. Every word, paragraph break, and punctuation mark is on purpose. You can feel the expert understanding of writing craft in each and every page.

Of particular merit is the author's ability to probe the mind of each of her characters and portray not only their ideals, but the thoughts, emotions, and experience behind them. She then takes these minds and wages them against one another in a true-to-life manner which captivates as much as it agonizes.

Said simply, Sea Wife is a masterpiece, one that any connoisseur of fine literary fiction will find enlightening. Ready to start reading? Enjoy your voyage.

Thank you to Net Galley for providing an e copy of this book for my review. I'll be honest, this book was not what I expected. I knew from reading the publisher's blurb that it would be a mystery, there would be a death and that some unexpected complications would happen as a couple and their two young children leave suburbia to sail for a year. This proved to be the set up and while the mystery and thrilling situations did occur this book was much more the story of a marriage. Through the voice of the wife and log posts by the husband we learn of childhood traumas, wildly different political leanings, depression and dishonesty. Throw in some stories about the children, the wife's mother, the boat dealer and various people met along the way and the book felt a bit aimless to me. The ending left me flat. I would give the book three and a half stars because it was interesting enough for me to keep turning the pages but I will round up to four stars since I expected the book to capture my interest in a way it was never intended to.

I learned about this book months ago on a bookish podcast and had jotted down the title- I was so excited to see it on NetGalley and then be approved to read it! This suspense read had me hooked from the beginning and put me on edge a lot more often than I thought it would! Marriage is hard. Marriage on a boat is even harder. A sailing trip with a husband and two small children sounds like a disaster from the get-go. I did have that part right...though I thought it also enveloped the power of hope and while it had some dark paths I did not find it depressing but more soulful. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for an e-ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own,

So atmospheric! Asked for this because I heard about it on the podcast “what should I read next” and it didn’t disappoint. I love family dramas and I loved the sea as a character.

Wow, I loved this book! My husband and I sail together and I could relate to Juliet so much. The writing was so good and the characters and setting memorable.

Such a well written and well thought out book. I had to ask myself if I would ever move my children to a sailboat, probably not, but I can see the appeal, certainly in today's political climate. Marriage is difficult in itself, but navigating that along with ACTUALLY navigating the seas would definitely bring to light the strength of one's marriage.

I loved this book and can't wait to pick up my next Amity Gaige novel!

Sea Wife was not quite the bright adventure story I thought it would be. There was an adventure, but there was also unmanaged mental health issues, a failing marriage, disillusionment with life, and some mystery.

Juliet and Michael are married with two kids. They’re increasingly unhappy with each other and their individual lives. When Michael’s malaise leads him to a boat harbor, he meets a boat broker who spurs him into action. Although she has misgivings and a great fear, in an effort to salvage their marriage, Juliet agrees to a prolonged voyage through the Caribbean. If that is not enough for readers to determine that something is going to go very wrong, Michael seals the fate of the voyage by changing the name of the boat.

There are good days and bad. There are idyllic afternoons spent on deserted islands playing with their children, and there are frightening storms that tossed the boat and its passengers. Through it all, the children, Sybil and George, are gamers. They embrace the adventure! Sybil is particularly adorable and observant. From Juliet’s perspective, Michael seems to blossom at sea. My take on Michael is that his behavior is at best manic and at worst, desperate. When he starts getting mysterious calls and conveniently loses the boat’s SAT phone, I start to question Michael’s intentions and odd behavior.

Sea Wife is told in dual POV with the timeline toggling between past and present. Michael’s story is told mostly through his ‘captain’s log/diary”, and Juliet tells her version via reminiscing about all that happened. Some of the POV transitions are rough; there are no headers or chapter titles to tell you who is telling the story, and sometimes the POV changes mid-page. This roughness is sometimes like different currents colliding, and I felt like I was underwater struggling to get to air. In hindsight, the layout does add to the tense atmosphere and fractures in mental and emotional composure. In the end, it is hard to decide who was the victim, who was just unlucky, and who was the survivor. Days after finishing, I can’t stop pondering and questioning the story and its characters.

"People think they’re running from their problems... But those people are not running from problems. They just want different problems. They don’t want the problems of paperwork and traffic and political correctness. They want the problems of wind and weather. The problem of which way to go."
Amity Gaige
Sea Wife

This book is hard to nail down- it's suspense, thriller, literary fiction and mystery rolled into one. A married couple and their two young kids embark on a year-long sailing trip. It. is the story of a marriage in trouble and there are big themes: postpartum depression, sexual abuse, marital distress, and politics. It is told in dual timelines through Juliet's diary and Michael's sailing log. It bounces around a bit- just like a ship at sea. It kept me turning pages to the end to find out what happened. While I really enjoyed it, the ending left some significant holes that I wanted filled in.

This story, told in alternating voices, draws you in with real-life suspense from the very beginning. Juliet and Michael set out for an extended sailing venture with two young children and a rocky marriage. What ensues is a story any married couple can relate to. It is an honest exploration of marriage and leaves the reader with hope despite a tragedy.

Full disclosure: I finished this book yesterday and when I finished I was glad it was over. But I kept thinking about it, so clearly it was a positive experience just to read it (I want books that make me THINK, after all!). But I just can’t decide on a rating. Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? No. Am I grateful to Knopf Doubleday for a copy in exchange for my honest review? Oh yeah.

It was described as “a literary page-turner about a young family who escape suburbia for a yearlong sailing trip that upends all of their lives.” So I was expecting a large amount of detail about sailing, most of which was a foreign language to me, and I’m not terribly interested in learning a foreign language right now. I was also expecting a large amount of introspection and detail about family dynamics, and one or more big events or adventures. That was all there. I wasn’t expecting as much on depression and childhood trauma…but that was integral to the story, so I was fine with it.

The story is told from alternating points of view of both the wife (Juliet, also the name of the sailboat) and the husband (Michael, writing in his ship’s log). Even though they have a seven-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, they decide to buy a 44-foot sailboat (sight unseen) and spend a year sailing the world. Right away, I thought “what could POSSIBLY go wrong?” but I realize I tend to be risk-averse, and I admired their courage to pursue their (really HIS) dream.

At the beginning, Juliet is depressed by the relentless demands of being a full-time mother and her inability to finish her dissertation (I admit I thought anyone would be depressed after years of studying “confessional poetry”). She takes to hiding: “I am a mother. Gradually, I just gave them all away, all my spaces, one by one down to the very last closet.” Michael has sailing experience, so it seems like it should be fine. The beginning of the trip bodes well, as their marriage seems to get a breath of fresh air with Juliet’s emergence from her depression and the way the children blossom as they learn to live on the water, confined to a small space (it made my claustrophobia come out, I admit).

Spoiler alert: things go wrong. Old wounds emerge. Unexpected events happen. Police are involved. Juliet turns into Anne Sexton (not exactly, but close enough). I found much of the writing to be beautiful. I found the atmosphere to be unsettling. I found Juliet to be relatable, despite being a bit of a pain. And I found Michael to be somewhat self-absorbed, but maybe that was after years of dealing with Juliet’s illness.

Definitely worth a read. I admit I was eager for it to end, as I found the whole experience unsettling…but that is likely due to my own inability to take such a risk as well as the current pandemic and quarantine making everything a bit weird. Four stars.

This was a really interesting concept for me, a family sort of dropping out of "normal" life and taking to the sea for a year. I'm always fascinated by real-life stories like this but you can't get many details from a newspaper article. This, of course, was fiction but I thought it was a thoughtful look into what could happen if you made this unusual choice. There was some mystery/tension but the bulk was just more day to day life on the sea/travel based.

"It's true--history is written by the victors. That's why we need poets. To sing of our defeats."

When Sea Wife starts off we know a couple things. We know that a family gave up the comforts of the daily grind in favor of sailing for a year and, we know that something went horribly wrong when they were out at sea but we don't know what happened. All we know for sure is Juliet, the wife and mother, made it out of whatever happened wrecked with grief and guilt. This book starts out at the aftermath of a tragedy we have yet to learn about and unfolds wildly from beginning to end.

A lot about this book really worked for me. I love books that build in foreboding and give the reader the sense that the other shoe could drop at any moment. That always works for me. I will never stop pursuing the thrill of foreboding reads!!

Sea Wife has a very strong sense of place. The descriptions of the sea and the often treacherous winds propelling the sailboat into what we know is going to be a disaster of some kind, was an intoxicating experience. The author's imagery here was so effective I could smell the salt of the sea whenever I read it.

The format of this book is going to prevent people from liking this as much as it deserves. The sea wife switched perspectives and voices often. We read the husband's sailing journal for a good chunk of this book. At first his journal is observations of the water and wind and the different ports he explores with his family, but slowly it becomes a sort of dairy. When we aren't reading his field notes, we are hearing from the perspective of his wife filling in the gaps of what happened. This novel does not follow a formulaic narrative arc. I can guess that the authors intent was to create a disorienting reading experience that is on par with the disorientation the characters feel out at sea. At times the way the author executed this masterfully. Other times it felt a little confusing and contrived.

My rating and enjoyment of The Sea Wife come from my own experience growing up sailing the reservoirs in a landlocked state with my family. So much of this story brought up feelings of intense nostalgia for navigating something so fragile at the hands of such unruly and unpredictable nature elements. I really enjoyed this, but I also understand why people are not going to enjoy this particular type of storytelling. Much like the forces of nature present in this book, it is dizzying and intoxicating in its unfathomable lack of predictability.

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars

Reviewers note: This book was given to me for free in exchange for my honest review.

You can find Sea Wife on a bookshelf near you NOW

In my twenties I hiked the John Muir Trail with my dad, in my thirties my (now ex) husband and I spent a year touring the West in a 27-foot Lazy Daze motorhome from Cabo San Lucas to Barrow, Alaska, and a few years later I took off on my own in a little red Miata to see the rest of the country. So I get Michael Partlow’s dream of sailing around the world, the siren call of leaving home for freedom and adventure. Now after 72 days of sheltering in place, I feel the lure of the open road more than ever.

But it’s not just wanderlust that pulls Michael to the marina to gaze at sailboats; for him it’s about leaving behind “years of my life spent waiting to turn right into the vast Omni parking lot, pulling my weight even when bored to tears, trying to be a decent person and coworker and not some boozer or flower-stomper.” His wife Juliet does not get it, but he eventually wears her down, and they take off with 7-year-old Sybil and toddler George to sail around the Caribbean. A novice sailor, a reluctant first mate, and two kids on a sailboat – what could go wrong?

The story unfolds from different points of view: Michael’s sea log juxtaposed with Juliet’s narration after the voyage along with occasional tidbits from young Sybil. At first this constant ping-ponging drove me crazy, but it quickly proved as propulsive as a sea breeze filling a mainsail - along with driving curiosity about what happened. For the reader know from the beginning that things end badly.

“Where does a mistake begin?” Juliet wonders in the first line of the book, but before we find out why she is hiding in her husband’s closet, we visit idyllic tropical islands and share Michael’s realization that “there’s only one ocean. One big mother ocean.” We see how “joyful/unmaterialistic/resilient” sailing kids are and feel Juliet’s liberation from the burden of a houseful of possessions.

This nautical equivalent of the road-trip novel tells the story of a troubled marriage with its unique conflicts and persistent loyalties while also managing to address the anxieties of motherhood, our country’s current political divide, and even the confessional poetry of Anne Sexton - all in visceral, compelling detail.

Although it obviously wasn’t written with a global pandemic in mind, this was great shelter in place reading. “It’s very beautiful, you must understand, at night on a boat,” Juliet tells us. “The moon flatters the sea. It electrifies the spindrift. It animates the clouds, riming their humped edges white. In its lambency, the clouds mount and tumble.” For a little while I too got to sail all night across the open sea, bewitched by wind and moonlight.

I know this is a book I will love. I read 15% of it, but had to stop-- it is too claustrophobic for me right now, in this time of quarantine and confinement. The book has so much for me, particularly the nuances of motherhood and the struggles of parenting young children (including the dynamics between partners). It's interesting that a book about traveling around the world is making me feel like the walls are closing in, but such are these times. I will certainly come back to this.

The story of a marriage, a family, and a boat trip. The foreshadowing works here, though it is usually a plot device I don't enjoy. A good summer read.

The book was so addictively readable. I couldn't read fast enough to get the next perspective. I thoroughly enjoyed this nautical thriller. I am choosing this as my summer book pick to recommend to everyone!

With their two kids—Sybil, age seven, and George, age two—Juliet and Michael set off for Panama to meet their 44 ft boat and set sail for a year long voyage. they deal with their strained marriage, children in a confined space and the adversities presented by the sea. Throughout the book I was apprehensive and anticipating the tragedy that would eventually unfold.

Sea Wife is a beautiful story of a family that ventures out on the sea for year, leaving all land luxuries behind. Michael and Juliet each have their own complex story this is unraveled as the story goes on. The structure of the book was done well - a back and forth between Juliet now and Michael's sailing log of their time on the water. I ended up getting this on audio because the text was difficult to follow with the changing perspective. The audio is done well; you can hear each person cutting in to the other's story. The ending felt a bit anticlimactic and unresolved, but I felt the book as a whole was beautifully written, and the meaning of the title was beautiful.

Thank you @netgalley & @aaknopf for this one.

You guys 😭 I LOVED this book. Beautiful story of a small family that trades suburbia for a life at sea. It’s packed with real-life marital banter, adventure, & a surprising amount of tenderness.

In spite of my complete lack of knowledge of all things sailing & boats, this book was a refreshingly relevant take on marriage, mental health, loss, grief, & parenting. The story also holds an element of mystery that made it a compulsively readable page-turner. I couldn't put it down. All 5 stars from me, ——★★★★★, loved it

𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆
•real, flawed characters
•sailing
•realistic, honest stories about family life/marriage

𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒖𝒔. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆.