54. The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake

listened to audio on Audible Escape
narrated by Tavia Gilbert (A little over zealous)
Unabridged audio (10:10)
2019 Disney Hyperion
400 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished  3/19/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.00 - 1752 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting:  contemporary coastal Lyric, Maine

First line/s:  "Fun fact: My great-great-great grandmother was the lone survivor of a shipwreck."

My comments:  This book has an excellent storyline and a great cast of characters.  However I found it particularly depressing throughout.  Definitely for older YAs.  S-foot tall Violet, promiscuous since the age of 12, is spending her 16th summer in Maine with her uncle in the home where her mother grew up.  Her brother is spending the summer in a rehabilitation facility in Vermont after a suicide attempt.  Though only 16, Violet has had male and female lovers, dabbled in drugs and alcohol, and been suspended from school already.  She's a mess. The narrator put a little too much feeling into her narration in many parts of the book, making many of those parts difficult to listen to because her emphasis was a lot different than mine would have been if I was reading the book instead of listening.  Boy, she was really into it!

Goodreads synopsis:  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.