Review of Slanting Towards the Sea by Lidija Hilje

*Slanting Towards the Sea* by Lidija Hilje (2025). Published by Simon & Schuster.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I’ve always and forever been a library girl from the bottom of my heart. When I was a child my mother would always take us to the library and I’d pick out a ridiculous amount of books, and I’ve continued that tradition when I moved home from New York City, after college, in order to keep picking my brain for new stories out there in the world.

During this time while unemployed, in-between applying to jobs, I’ve been spending a lot of time just catching up on my advance copy collection. I’ve been running this blog for about four years now, and I get direct emails from publishers along with advance copies through NetGalley. I typically prefer NetGalley though because I only have so much room in my bedroom, and I don’t like to waste physical copies of books if I don’t plan on keeping them.

Anyways, I had an extensive backlog on NetGalley during this time and vowed to get through it while I could. Who knows what my life was going to look like when I have a 9-5 again, and I’ll probably feel dead inside and not want to read like I usually do. So I’ve been hitting up the digital files on my Kindle to crank through these, give them enough time they need, and then write the reviews before the books hit shelves.

Today’s review is on a book I was really excited to request on NetGalley: Slanting Towards the Sea. I’ve never read a Croatian book before now, and when I first read the synopsis for this one, I was really interested in what was contained on these pages. Needless to say, I ended up flying through this book.

Let’s get into the review! Much love and gratitude for NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of the novel.

One young Croatian woman grapples with love old and new over the course of one summer.

Our main character in this novel, and the protagonist, is Ivona. She’s a young woman from a small Croatian town, and when she was born, Croatia was under completely different circumstances politically. Go check out recent Croatian history if you want to have a deeper understanding, although Ivona’s explanations also help for those not well informed (like I was going into this).

She comes of age and Croatia becomes a democratic nation, but not without its bumps. Ivona decides to go into a specific field because of where she was born and how she can help the town, but by the time she finishes school, there are no jobs. But when she’s nineteen and still in school, she meets the love of her life: Vlaho.

The first section of the book is largely dedicated to exploring her love and time with Vlaho. One might say they were destined for each other, as, despite their lack of money and living in a tiny apartment, they were smitten with the very thought of the other person.

Ivona even gives up a critical opportunity to go to New York for research because she can’t imagine leaving Vlaho behind, but her decisions leave her in the dust, as ten years prior to the events of the book, Vlaho and Ivona get divorced. But as we see in the modern day, Ivona has not moved on in many ways.

He’s remarried to a woman named Marina and has two children. Ivona has to go back to her childhood home, now seemingly depressing without her mother and the life that it once held within it. This is a novel that seeps with grief and loss, and its main character is just as lost in many ways as the new country that was born during her lifetime.

The novel, in its sections, focuses on a different part of Ivona’s journey, especially when a new male figure enters her life and could be a serious contender for her heart. There are plenty of secrets to be uncovered during this specific time frame, especially when it comes to Ivona and Vlaho’s relationship with each other.

The writing in this book is slow, almost like the rising tide coming and going. We see where the title comes from pretty early on in the novel, as one of the main characters mentions, during a conversation, that they’re slanting towards the sea. And it seems fitting for this story, especially once all is said and done.

Overall Thoughts

I seriously wasn’t expecting to love this novel as much as I did, but I enjoyed reading it so much. I was pleasantly surprised to find out this was a debut author after the fact, which was shocking because A) this wasn’t the author’s first language, which is impressive considering the prose and B) said prose is done so well that it feels like the writer has been doing this for a long time.

Which they probably have, especially considering how long it takes to publish anything in this industry, but this was such a fantastic reading experience for me. The characters themselves aren’t the most likable at times, but I found them realistic in the sense that sometimes they make really poor decisions out of impulse.

It’s not the greatest writing when you don’t understand this facet of humanity and why the character does that, but I felt like I understood these characters enough that it wasn’t a copout or hard pivot. The author also doesn’t try too hard to explain Croatian culture to readers, which I appreciate because it’s more natural.

I highly recommend this novel if it’s something you’re interested in. Go check it out at your local library or support an indie bookstore when picking it up!

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