On the Island (On the Island #1) by Tracey Garvis-Graves

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.

T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments -- instead of his friends.

Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter.

Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man. 

-- Goodreads.com description --

This book came highly recommended to me and it has a 4.14 rating on Goodreads, so I decided to pick it up. However, I must admit was a bit nervous about a romance with such an age gap. In the end, my concerns were not relevant because this book deals with that theme perfectly! On the Island actually takes the opportunity to explore the issues involving a relationship with a huge age gap and describes both the positive and negative sides of the issue.

The survival story on the island was pretty fun, I was never bored reading this book. The romance was slow paced and very well done. It could have easily been disgusting, as T.J. is underage in the beginning of the novel but I never felt bad about this book.

On the Island has now become one of my favourite romance novels and I highly recommend it if you're in the mood for a good romance! 4 out of 5 stars, and I'm actually considering giving it a higher rating. If your only concern about the book is the fact that T.J. is a seventeen year old boy at the beginning of the novel, you should definitely pick this book up. I had those concerns as well but they were unfounded.

Have you read this book? Or are you planning to read it? Leave your thoughts down below!