Girl at Sea

by Maureen Johnson

Book Overview

Sometimes you have to get lost . . . The Girl: Clio Ford, seventeen, wants to spend the summer smooching her art-store crush, not stuck on a boat in the Mediterranean. At least she'll get a killer... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060541466
• ISBN13: 9780060541460
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Harperteen
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

Girl at Sea

This was a really good book for summertime... and I liked it much better than 13 Little Blue Envelopes, because I connected with the characters easier. I wouldn't come out and say this book was the greatest book I've ever read, but it was definitely worth my time. It kept me interested and I genuinely cared about Clio and what happened to her. Sure, I didn't agree with everything she did, but I still thought that this book was the perfect combination of fluff and seriousness. Definitely great.

Pick up GIRL AT SEA and travel to lands an ocean (or two) away

The summer before Clio's senior year is shaping up to be nearly perfect. First, there's her job at Galaxy Art Supply. Not only is Galaxy a place where she can indulge her love of art, but six-foot-five, shaggy-haired, vintage-dressed Ollie is employed there. Ollie and Clio aren't dating yet, but if Clio has anything to say about it, it's just a matter of time. All of that changes when Clio's mother, a restorer at the Philadelphia Art Museum, drops a bombshell: She has won a fellowship that will pay off her student loans and give her a salary at the same time. It will involve doing work she loves --- restoring 16th-century paintings. What's the catch? The work has to be done in Kansas. Without consulting Clio, her mom has made an executive decision. Clio's father, Ben, wants to take her to Italy over the summer, and Clio is going whether she likes it or not. Clio knows she sounds like a petulant brat when she thinks about it. How many other kids get the chance to go to amazing foreign countries over the summer? But other kids don't have her father. Ben is the source of a lot of angst in Clio's life. He has dragged her all over the world on weird "educational" opportunities. Because of him, Clio lives in a house that leans five inches to one side and has a tattoo that looks like a zipper running around one arm. When she arrives in Italy, Clio finds that her dad is acting secretively. Instead of a house or a villa, they're spending the summer on a yacht with Ben's girlfriend Julia, her curmudgeonly, green-eyed research assistant Aidan, her Swedish dairy goddess daughter Elsa, and the only sane one of the bunch, Ben's best friend Martin. Clio is put to work immediately, cooking for everyone on the boat, but all the chicken korma recipes in the world can't stave off her curiosity about why they're on the boat and why her dad insists on code names and secretive behavior. The only person more frustrating to Clio than her dad is Aidan. He's snobby and thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and he'd be so easy to hate if he weren't so intense. Clio decides that her father, Martin, Julia and Aidan can't keep her in the dark forever, and she's willing to take a few risks to find out what the adults are diving for all day long. What she discovers about herself, however, might be even more important than what's on the bottom of the ocean. Travel to Europe once again with Maureen Johnson, who will make you feel like you too are spending a very hot summer on a yacht miles from shore. Half the fun of this book is watching a historical mystery concerning a powerful stone unfold around thoroughly modern Clio. All the people here are interesting and real, even though you might not want to hang out with them in real life. Stuck in your hometown for the summer? Pick up GIRL AT SEA and travel to lands an ocean (or two) away. Just be careful of the jellyfish. --- Reviewed by Carlie Webber

Crazy, Fantastic Story

GIRL AT SEA is Maureen Johnson's best book yet, and that's really saying something, as anyone who has read her fantastic earlier novels will know. It's a mystery full of forgotten secrets from the past with travel, wonderful characters, romance, adventure, and so much more. The amazingly well-written page-turner has elements that will remind readers of bestselling adult books by big names like Dan Brown, but with a quirky charm and loveable main character all its own. Clio Ford is a seventeen-year-old aspiring artist who is understandably unhappy when she has to give up her dream job at the local art store to spend her summer vacation on a boat in Italy, tagging along on one of her father's mysterious adventures. It's just like old times, when they traveled the world with the money from Div!, a board game that Clio and her father invented on a rainy trip to the beach. This time, however, this sort of zany adventure has lost much of its magic for her. She worries that it must be costing a fortune that her father doesn't have because a past business partner took off with most of the Dive! money. Add that to the fact that Clio discovers she's also the unwilling addition to her father's date with his snarky new girlfriend, Julia, and you've got one unhappy teenaged girl. It's not all bad, though: she's had to leave her crush behind, but there may be an even better guy right on the Sea Butterfly. As bad as it seems when she finds out she's stuck on the boat, her time on board might not be half bad. After all, her father's crazy adventures were fun when she was twelve...right? But this expedition turns out to be unlike what she experienced before. There's a lot more in store than Clio--or anyone else--knows. My only complaint with this book is how soon it ended! When the story ends, the key to the mystery has been found--but the mystery itself has yet to be solved. I really, really hope there'll be a sequel to this crazy, fantastic, adventurous story! Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce 06/22/2007

Johnson Does It Again

The book was amazing, my saving grace in a pile of failures I bought at the book store. It details the adventures of Clio as she is forced from what could be a fantastic summer working side by side with her art store hottie, Ollie, to going along with her father on another one of his crazy schemes. This time, Clio and her father's other shipmates, family friend Martin, Clio's father's girlfriend, Julia, Julia's assistant, Aiden, and Julia's daughter, Elsa, will be on a yacht off the coast of Italy doing something that no one will tell her anything about. Clio is, understandably, upset. I found the book to be highly enjoyable and watching Clio try to deal with everything from her already frayed relationship with her father, to HIS relationship with Julia, to the extremely hush-hush reason they're on this modern day Gilligan's Isle waiting to happen, to the barbs exchanged between herself and the arrogant Aiden of Yale and Cambridge, to her friendship with Elsa especially when they both end up crushing on Aiden. Clio was extremely likeable, very understandable, and I was rooting for her and Aiden from their first interaction. Although the real plot of the story got lost in the character relationships and took awhile to kick in, I still enjoyed it. I love Maureen Johnson's writing and I think she's an amazing author. Girl at Sea is a book I would recommend for anyone with some time on their hands and a love for summer novels.

Fantastic Book!!!

Everything is going great for Clio. She finally gets the job of her dreams working with the guy of her dreams when she gets the news that she has to spend the summer in Italy with her father, on a boat. Most people would be happy about that but as far as she's concerned, it's the worst thing that could happen to her. She's stuck out at sea with a group of strangers on what seems to be one of her fathers rediculous schemes with no way of communicating with the outside world. Nobody will tell her what is going on and why exactly they are there, so she takes matters into her own hands to find the truth. It turns into a fantastic sea adventure that flips her world upside down. It's funny, exciting, clever and romantic. A great read.