sienaro 's review for:

How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer

2.0

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Why must short story collections all be like this?? Mostly depressing, but occasionally funny, but then mostly depressing. I think the majority of this story was rape, also murder, suicide, and more rape. It was actually too predictable to even be depressing by the second or third story because every few paragraphs, someone else was raped or murdered.

To name a few highlights:
-3 deaths that were too gruesome to read
-countless children without parents
-16+ drug addicts
-9 awful (mostly abusive) boyfriends
-2 chapters that I fell asleep halfway through

Great read if you love being disappointed.