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challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Grief
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement
Moderate: Death, Suicide, Grief, Death of parent
Minor: Lesbophobia
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The quality or writing and description of love and grief attached to love throughout this book are beautiful and finely crafted.
I struggled with the pace, and while I like stories where the author doesn't give all the answers the revelations saved for the end of this book didn't feel like enough.
I struggled with the pace, and while I like stories where the author doesn't give all the answers the revelations saved for the end of this book didn't feel like enough.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror
Minor: Terminal illness
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Something about how living means relinquishing the dead and letting them drop down or fall or sink.
A beautiful book that interweaves body horror, romance and the sea that fills your lungs, suffocates you and lets go over and over again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Death of parent
Moderate: Gore, Vomit
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This book is ultimately about grief and the process of letting go. The narrative switches between Miri’s perspective in the present and Leah’s perspective in the past. Miri is understandably frustrated when she gets no answers about why her wife was lost at the bottom of the sea for six months when she was only supposed to be on a research trip for a few weeks. Through Leah’s chapters, you learn a bit about the trip and what it was like for her to be surrounded by complete darkness and isolated in a submarine with two colleagues. The ending is kind of bittersweet in that I wish I had a clear understanding of what actually happened to Leah.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Body horror, Suicide
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It’s a love story. But a sad one. One full of grief and longing and confusion. It’s beautiful and horrible.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Grief
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Complicated
You know that feeling when someone is sitting right beside you, but you still feel as if you're missing them? Thats this book. It's hoping for a different ending even though you KNOW that's not going to happen. It's chronic, heartbreaking grief will hold you in it's arms and comfort you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Grief
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Suicide, Blood
Moderate: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Blood, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death, Cancer, Cursing, Homophobia, Terminal illness, Violence, Vomit, Lesbophobia
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A beautiful reflection on loving through loss. It's a little kafka-esque in that its imagery can be taken as metaphor for a few different real-world ways that relationships and people can fall apart.
Its a little lovecraftian as well, but focusing specifically on the effects of unknowable inhuman forces of an individual, fragile human.
Its a little lovecraftian as well, but focusing specifically on the effects of unknowable inhuman forces of an individual, fragile human.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book follows the POVs of Leah, who is trapped in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean trying to survive and maintain her sanity, and Miri, who is caring for a traumatized Leah after her return to land despite the growing sense that her wife did not return quite right. Both perspectives establish the book’s overall eerie and ominous vibes in different but complementary ways, leaving the reader also with the overwhelming sense that not everything is as it seems. I did find the ending to be a bit anticlimactic and I wished the mystery aspect had been delved into more, because it was set up and developed so fantastically but then you were left with a lot of unanswered questions regarding what exactly happened in the submarine and why.
Content Warnings
Minor: Body horror