“I'm dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world. Hannah, who found me on the Jellicoe Road six years ago.
Taylor is the leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs—the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.
And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor's only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother—who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.” - taken from Goodreads.com
These are the first lines from Jellicoe Road, as it was titled in the U.S.
“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.
I counted.
It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, 'What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?' and my father said, 'Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,' and that was the last thing he ever said.”
This book is about journeys, not only Taylor Markham’s, but some of the most important people in her life that are unknown to her. Told in alternating voices between modern-day Taylor and gang and a hidden story that she comes across from eighteen years earlier. That story tells of an unspeakable tragedy five life-long friends together. As Taylor begins to explore more of her background, readers will be taken in by her story and how the past collides with the present day. And Jonah Griggs! What can I say about him without giving any important details? I now see what all of the fangirling from book reviews is all about.
Jellicoe Road has resided on my TBR pile for years and now I’m going to kick myself for not reading, or in my case, listening, to it sooner. From the opening lines, the reader becomes entranced by the events that occurred along the Jellicoe Road. Overall, the story caused this reader to cry her eyes out and look ahead to the book’s ending before finishing it. One of my all-time favorite reads!
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