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A review by drraytay
Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Did not finish book. Stopped at 42%.
Theoretically the subject matter of this book is right up my ally. It’s hard to pinpoint why this book didn’t work for me but it just didn’t and I couldn’t finish it.
It was very emotional but it still felt surface level, try hard, and repetitive. The emotions weren’t believable for me because everyone was constantly crying and gushing over each other. I kept finding myself thinking “no one speaks like this all of the time.”
It was also really difficult to pick up the tone of the conversations because there was no description of mood until the end of a conversation if at all. Dante was either suddenly enraged or laughing and every time I thought “that came out of nowhere.” Everything was just over the top.
I honestly wanted to finish this book for the sake of completeness since I read the first in the series but it felt like a struggle even though it’s a fairly quick read.
From other reviews it sounds like this book gets biphobic and transphobic. The first book was already deeply misogynistic so that’s really not surprising. Also I HATED that Ari’s mom outed him to his sisters. That was extremely out of character for her and it was glazed over as if that isn’t a massive violation of trust.
It was very emotional but it still felt surface level, try hard, and repetitive. The emotions weren’t believable for me because everyone was constantly crying and gushing over each other. I kept finding myself thinking “no one speaks like this all of the time.”
It was also really difficult to pick up the tone of the conversations because there was no description of mood until the end of a conversation if at all. Dante was either suddenly enraged or laughing and every time I thought “that came out of nowhere.” Everything was just over the top.
I honestly wanted to finish this book for the sake of completeness since I read the first in the series but it felt like a struggle even though it’s a fairly quick read.
From other reviews it sounds like this book gets biphobic and transphobic. The first book was already deeply misogynistic so that’s really not surprising. Also I HATED that Ari’s mom outed him to his sisters. That was extremely out of character for her and it was glazed over as if that isn’t a massive violation of trust.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia
Minor: Outing