Open Water

Before I started the book, I read a lot of good reviews, and expected it to be the one that would finally be my first 5 star book of 2024.

However, I was soon disappointed. While writing an entire book in second person narrative sounds like a novel idea, it just did not click with me. The writing felt pretentious, whiny, and overly dramatic for the most part. The characters in the book feel less like characters, and more like sketches and outlines of some vague idea of a character. The second person narrative did not make me feel connected and engaged to the story or the thoughts of the narrator. Instead, it got tiring to read very quickly. At one point, I was dragging myself through the pages just to get something good out of the book by the end.

While I appreciate the theme and the message that the author was trying to convey, I believe it would have been better received if he had told it through the story of the characters. The message seems forced through repeatedly writing scenarios evoking visual imageries that add no value to the story, but just act as sympathy gainers.