Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church, fighting her sister and losing her best friend. Overflowing with feeling, she pours her secrets and herself into her song journal when the world threatens to sweep her away. The one place she feels tied down to earth is at her Aunty Ehu’s house. Those joyous Saturdays with her extended Native Hawaiian community living in Western Washington are precious to her. Under the maple trees, the fragments of her life fit together, if only for an afternoon.

Then, an unspeakable truth about her father shatters this one perfect corner of her life.

As Aouli’s world constricts around what others wish she could be, language fails her. But when a new boy, Nalu, turns up with eyes that seem to pierce right into her soul, maybe it’s love that can give her the words to set herself free.

An introspective work that touches on different forms of love, particularly first love and self-love. Aouli starts this book very lost. Her family and her best friend don’t understand her nor are they willing to try. It’s extremely frustrating especially in the case of her domineering and verbally abusive father.

In that kind of home environment, I understand why Aouli feels so insecure. No one wants to listen to her, always jump on her worst traits, etc. Being quiet and obedient allows her to float through life somewhat unscathed. But she feels alone, and unloved, and nothing she will do is good enough.

That’s why her romance with Nalu is so sweet. While Nalu can jump to conclusions at times, at least he’s willing to apologize and communicate. He encourages her, perhaps the first and only, with her poetry, and even his name fits hers. Hers is the blue expanse of the sky, his translates to the blue expanse of the sea. Sky meet sea, it fits.

Nalu and Aouli’s relationship is nicely uncomplicated as far as YA romances go, and touches on some of the stereotypes Native Hawaiians deal with among Caucasian peers who do not care to learn the reality of their culture.

Aouli’s relationship with her sister gets more depth and a nice treatise with Aouli seeing that her sister is not as perfect and as strong as she assumed, allowing them a chance to bond and become allies in the face of their parents’ turbulent marriage.

Aouli’s relationship is grimly realistic and tragic. Aouli’s self-esteem grows in the book, at the cost of realizing she may never get the love and understanding a kid craves from their parents, and that she must find it within herself.

This leads to the one flaw in the novel as Aouli gains more confidence in leaning on the heritage of her native Hawaiian culture from Aunty Ehu, but there were few chapters about what that means and how Aouli connects to it compared to her church thus it is more told than shown.

The poetry itself is nice in that I can understand it, and doesn’t have deeper meanings that confuse me. Basically, I can follow the narrative structure and appreciate it when Adams puts variety in the poetic structure.

4 stars