The Last True Poets of the Sea

Author Julia Drake
Narrator Tavia Gilbert
Publisher Blackstone Publishing
Run Time 10 hours and 10 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Children’s / Teenage fiction: Family and home stories, Children’s / Teenage fiction: General fiction, Children’s / Teenage personal and social topics: Mental health, Children’s / Teenage personal and social topics: siblings.

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What to expect

From a stunning new voice in YA literature comes an epic, utterly unforgettable contemporary novel about a lost shipwreck, a missing piece of family history, and weathering the storms of life.

The Larkin family isn’t just lucky—they persevere. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great grandmother didn’t drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer.

But wrecks seem to run in the family: Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life.

Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece—the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century.

She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes—and the bridges she builds along the way—may be the start of something like survival.

Epic, funny, and sweepingly romantic, The Last True Poets of the Sea is an astonishing debut about the strength it takes to swim up from a wreck.

Critics Review

“Tender and incisive, profound and page-turning, warm and beautifully written, and very funny.”
Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“At once hilarious, insightful, and swashbuckling, Drake’s debut is a lyrical adventure like no other.”
David Arnold, New York Times bestselling author
“Witty, surprising…A warm, wise, strange meditation on developing the strength to be vulnerable.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Drake has drawn all her characters richly, easily enabling readers to identify with Violet, Sam, and their struggles. The seaside setting is vividly evoked, and readers will feel fully transported to the small town of Lyric.”
BookPage
“An authentic and romantic tale…that shows that life can be embraced again even after enduring a tragedy.”
School Library Journal (starred review)
“Drake’s suspenseful novel offers three strands of high drama…[and] Violet emerges as a genuine, sympathetic protagonist struggling to create something new from the wreckage of her life.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Wry, quick-witted, and filled with deep grief and fathomless joy in equal measure…Precisely and profoundly maps the ebbs and flows of surviving through trauma.”
Booklist (starred review)
“Tavia Gilbert’s expressive narration shows careful attunement to the emotions of sixteen-year-old Violet…Gilbert deftly portrays secondary characters and gradually shows Violet thawing through her uncle’s kindness, the friendship of locals, and her investigation of her ancestral past…Gilbert smoothly differentiates Violet’s nuanced feelings, deepening her emotions as she falls in love for the first time.”
AudioFile
“As warm and bright as a beach bonfire on a hazy summer night, The Last True Poets of the Sea will lift you up on a tide of love and lyricism, and carry you away, laughing and crying.”
Jeff Zentner, Morris Award–winning author
“An immersive, emomtional, and deeply honest story about family, friendship, mental health, and all the different forms of courage. A powerful and beautifully told paean to living among wreckage and finding home—and hope—inside ruins.”
Kelly Loy Gilbert, author of Picture Us in the Light

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