Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re still in the C’s!!!
Country: Croatia
Title: Slanting Towards the Sea
Author: Lidija Hilge
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2025
“Back home, all things slant towards the sea.”
“I can’t remember the last time someone said I had potential. But the thing about potential is that it doesn’t go away. If you fail to realize it, you don’t simply lose it. Instead, it sediments inside you, like tar or asbestos, slowly releasing its poison.”
“Now it’s just a relic of old times, a forgotten little figurine on a shelf. It’s just a doll, within a doll, but there should be two more dolls instead her. I lost them, somewhere, sometime. Now, it’s as hollow as I am, and we stare at each other in mutual understanding.”
Slanting Towards the Sea is a love story in a world where love doesn’t win, where love hurts, where you don’t ride off into the sunset. Ivona divorced her husband, Vlaho, nine years ago. She’s remained stagnant since. He marries her friend, has two kids, and they have a triangle of a relationship. She takes what she can get from this man who is her world and his wife and kids.
The novel alternates between the past and present, showing the reader what caused the break. Who caused the break. And what secrets remain hidden. Since the divorce, she’s lived with her father, a man she’s had a complicated relationship with. She cares for him and is trying to save his dream for him. But it’s not her dream. She doesn’t want it. And it doesn’t make financial sense. She loves Lovorun, the family estate, the olive trees are a part of her, but she doesn’t want to open a hotel, doesn’t want to run a hotel, and they don’t have the money to open it. Pushing back against her father and brother nearly tears her apart, but she’s already shelved the life she wanted when she learned she couldn’t have children. She manages to stand firm and convinces them they have to sell. Enter Asier – the investor looking to buy Lovorun. She thinks maybe after nine years, she can move on, find another love, be touched. She thinks the triangle can become a square, and all hell breaks loose.
Slanting Towards the Sea is heavy with ache. I couldn’t put it down because I needed it to break, to give way, to find release. It does, by the end, but it’s not satisfying. I wanted Ivona to choose herself, and she does, but not fully. Never fully. Both Croatia and Vlaho have a hold on her that won’t quit.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 