A review by inuyasha
Chlorine by Jade Song

dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.0

really truly just did not work for me. both extremely overwritten and underdeveloped - desperately needed several more rounds of editing. there were so many casual mistakes here - mentioning cathy's mom bought her a new car without thinking about it vs later saying cathy bought it herself on credit and it was a beat up piece of junk. ren learning to sew even though she mentioned having sewing project earlier in the novel. referring to a sentence of 6 words as 5 specifically.... idk. it was glaring. i specifically laughed at the paragraph referencing blue eyes white dragon yugioh cards which was an extremely silly reference given it was already established ren had a real lack of pop culture knowledge, but also bc that specifically is less an actual yugioh reference and more so a deeply online meme that kind of highlighted why this type of writing just doesn't work for me. 

it kind of had me once the actual horror aspects started to come into play but that ending was so tedious and boring that it lost me again. 

i think the overall concept of this was very similar to earthlings by sayaka murata that i found to be a much better execution of these ideas.