{"id":6365,"date":"2026-05-19T10:51:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T10:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6365"},"modified":"2026-05-19T10:51:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T10:51:00","slug":"sea-and-stars-by-kelly-jarvis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6365","title":{"rendered":"Sea and Stars by Kelly Jarvis"},"content":{"rendered":"

A deeply felt journey across oceans and expectations, where love takes shape between misunderstanding and recognition<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cHer father and mother had loved each other. They had loved her. These simple facts changed everything.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In Sea and Stars<\/em>, Kelly Jarvis builds a story shaped by what is known too late. The novel follows Arabella Porter; a healer raised on the Isle of Skye among generations of women gifted with second sight. When a letter reveals the identity of the father she has never known, she is drawn across the ocean to Mystic, Connecticut, in search of him. There, she encounters a more rigid society, led by the renowned Alden family, whose son, James, challenges her understanding of both her past and her future.<\/p>\n

No one is quite as they seem: not her father, William Stafford, a man capable of cruelty and unexpected tenderness, nor her half-sister, Anne, whose vanity gradually turns to devotion. There is also James\u2019s ailing grandmother, Elinor, whose curiosity and quiet dignity make her difficult not to admire. There are the ghosts of others, too: Arabella\u2019s mother, Catherine, who wanted love more than duty, and Mary, James\u2019s mother, whose early death haunts his family.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is James, a surprisingly gentle and charming presence. Though he struggles to understand Arabella\u2019s disregard\u2014even her disdain\u2014for the expectations of polite society, he never stops trying. It is this persistence that sets him apart, even when Arabella doubts him because of the bitter feud between him and her father. Despite his privileged upbringing, James is more understanding about people than Arabella is. She tends to define others in absolutes, while he is more accepting of their complexities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s natural, then, that there are countless misunderstandings between them. Both are stubborn and headstrong, neither wanting to give in first. There\u2019s an underlying attraction between them from the start, with James wondering if Arabella is a siren. If she is, he would let her ruin him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s a lightness to their relationship too, as the novel allows them moments of happiness too. There is something achingly tender in the moments they share, when they take part in a handfasting ceremony, both pretending it means nothing. You don\u2019t just want them to be together; you know they should be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this emotional clarity that Jarvis captures so well. Her prose is understated yet lovely, especially when she builds scenes around the relationships at their center. Rather than relying on overwhelming drama, she allows meaning to emerge through smaller, softer moments that carry just as much weight. In doing so, she gives her characters space to misunderstand, to hesitate, and to grow in ways that feel natural, even when the broader narrative occasionally stumbles.<\/p>\n

The land, too, is inseparable from the novel, as is the sense of magic that runs through it. The Isle of Skye is rendered with an intimacy that makes it feel alive, from its windswept moors to the fields of thistles stinging underfoot. Arabella remembers the land as deeply as the traditions of her family, the two becoming inseparable in how she understands the world. In Mystic, it becomes a meeting of the Old World and the New, blending with a sense of history that Jarvis adeptly weaves throughout.<\/p>\n

What grounds the novel most, however, is the relationship between Arabella and James. For all their misunderstandings, there is a sense that they are always moving toward one another, even when they struggle to understand why. It is in these softer, more uncertain moments that Sea and Stars<\/em> sings.<\/p>\n

The post Sea and Stars by Kelly Jarvis<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A deeply felt journey across oceans and expectations, where love takes shape between misunderstanding and recognition \u201cHer father and mother had loved each other. They had loved her. These simple facts changed everything.\u201d In Sea and Stars, Kelly Jarvis builds a story shaped by what is known too late. The novel follows Arabella Porter; a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}