My Journey to the Ocean By Lena Mikado

Title: My Journey to the Ocean

Author: Lena Mikado

Genre: Romance / Chicklit

This novel is a memoir. Memoir gone chick lit (a bit twisted, perhaps at times too philosophical chick lit), yet still a memoir. It is a story about coming out of age, about what is happening on one's mind when they are falling out of love and about trying to live in the present moment. All wrapped up in the sugar cone of that elusive humor of our everyday lives.

Elena knows what she wants from life. Her whole picture-perfect existence is planned out and allows for no deviation. She is engaged to be married and intends to be happy. Along with three of her girlfriends, she takes a summer trip across the ocean, to St. Simons Island, Georgia, United States. Pool parties, vodka watermelons and the eternal question - to shag or not to shag. Her whole world is about to be rock-n-rolled, and she will have to face a pretty hard choice. It all sounds like a setup for a summer-fling novel, but is it really like that in actuality, or does Miss Real Life have something more conniving under her sleeve? Are there happy endings in real life?

Author Bio

Lena Mikado was born in Voronezh, Russia, and moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA at the age of 22. Lena received her MA degree in Linguistics, Translation and Intercultural Communication in 2005. She is the owner of a translation and localization company, writer, mummy, wife, blogger and belly dancer. And not always in this order. Lena writes tongue-in-cheek chick lit novels that are full of reflections on the matters that bother all of us every minute of our lives: love and hate, life and death, motherhood and trying to live in the present moment. My Journey to the Ocean is the first novel of the All Colors of the Rainbow series.

Links

www.lenamikado.com
https://twitter.com/Lena_Mikado
https://www.facebook.com/lenamikado?ref=hl
Buy on Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00QI89NW4
Add on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10439778.Lena_Mikado

Book Excerpts

What else can be said about love? The poems have been written, the songs have been composed. It seems that anything we might want to express has already been done for us. But I think I’ll give it another go.

All of us start this life as tiny, helpless babies, who explore the world around them, make their own mistakes, and come to their own conclusions. And isn’t it fun? If we simply followed what has already been learned by the previous generations, with no attempts to contribute little bits of our own experience, life would be so dull and so unavoidably status quo.

I’ve recently become a mother. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this to get the usual “Oh, how sweet! What a cute pumpkin! Sweetie pie!” I honestly do believe that majority of people couldn’t care less about somebody else’s children unless they have their own offspring of approximately the same age. I sure didn’t care. But once you emerge on the other side and become a parent, you can then relate to a lot of notions you previously considered alien. You can even relate to your own parents!

These thoughts are crossing my mind as I follow my 15-month-old son up and down the steps of our friends’ house. It’s his ninth trip back and forth, and, honestly, never in my life have I imagined that I would be ready to exhaust myself to such an extent for a male human being. And here I am, readily performing Kung Fu jumps over the sofa to prevent him from a bad fall. Why do kids take such big risks? Why are they so reckless? Doesn’t he realize what consequences his actions will have? The questions are rhetorical. No, he doesn’t realize it. Just as I didn’t realize that a person can’t be smoking two packs of cigarettes a day without drastically shortening their expected lifespan. How can I communicate to him that he can’t be doing this? You can’t, Elena. He’ll just have to learn on his own mistakes. Now I can clearly see the picture. If you managed to happily survive your adolescent years without causing much harm to your health or criminal record, you might as well get ready to spend the rest of your life wondering how in the world you can protect your children from making the same mistakes you’ve made. Nobody tells you this when you’re getting ready to become a parent. Nobody warns you: “Beware, you’ll be tortured by the dilemma forever!” I suspect it’s a global conspiracy invented to persuade inhabitants of the planet Earth to procreate.

Young people consider themselves immortal and invincible. They are always right and there is nothing you can do to prove them otherwise. It’s horribly dangerous, but for some reason, when I look back at my very young self, I only want to smile. My reader, let’s imagine that we do have access to the greatest invention ever – a time machine. Let’s hop on board and head over ten years back. I want to see myself again – young, naïve, full of life, when the world was definitely my oyster and nothing could take it from me.