26. On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves

listened on Audible
narrated by Heidi Baker
Unabridged Audio (7:02)
2012 Penguin
346 pgs.
Adult Contemporary Romance
Finished March 6, 2019
Goodreads rating:  4.13 - 68,819 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting: a tiny island in the Maldives area of the Indian Ocean, early 2000

First line/s:  "I was thirty years old when the seaplane T. J. Callahan and I were traveling on crash-landed in the Indian Ocean.  T.J. was sixteen and three months into remission from Hodgkins Lymphoma.  The pilot's name was Mick, but he died before we hit the water."

My comments:  Chapters went back and forth - first, Anna, then T.J.  The story is exactly as the Goodreads synopsis outlines, two people learning to live and survive on a beautiful island in the middle of the Indian ocean.  It becomes a love story, replete with hardships, dangers and sorrows, as well as joy, happiness and love - the kind of novel you read just for fun and end up totally enjoying!

Goodreads synopsis:  When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.
          T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments -- instead of his friends. 
          Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter.
          Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.