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seawoodwrites 's review for:
Boy Underwater
by Adam Baron
I received this as a free ebook from Netgalley. This does not affect my review.
This is a really quirky, hard-to-categorise read. I'd put it around the top end of middle grade - more like 12yo territory rather than 9yo, even though the protagonist is only in Y4 himself. It's similar to books like The Light Jar, A Boy Called Hope and Bubble Boy; there's some hefty emotional content to deal with here, and it would be a book I would only hand to my maturer readers in Y6. In fact - and this in no way detracts from how much I liked the book - I think there is a mismatch between the character's age and the content which is a bit unsettling, flipping between very childlike and almost too mature. And I have met kids like that, actually, I think most primary staff do - children who have far too many adult issues to deal with because their adults are messed up. In book form, though, it makes Cymbeline a difficult character to get attached to, swinging from madcap, funny quest, to deeply serious mental health issues. There's some really deft writing here about family, friends and fitting in which is very nicely done, but overall I get the sense the book isn't quite sure what it wants to be or exactly who it's aimed at.
This is a really quirky, hard-to-categorise read. I'd put it around the top end of middle grade - more like 12yo territory rather than 9yo, even though the protagonist is only in Y4 himself. It's similar to books like The Light Jar, A Boy Called Hope and Bubble Boy; there's some hefty emotional content to deal with here, and it would be a book I would only hand to my maturer readers in Y6. In fact - and this in no way detracts from how much I liked the book - I think there is a mismatch between the character's age and the content which is a bit unsettling, flipping between very childlike and almost too mature. And I have met kids like that, actually, I think most primary staff do - children who have far too many adult issues to deal with because their adults are messed up. In book form, though, it makes Cymbeline a difficult character to get attached to, swinging from madcap, funny quest, to deeply serious mental health issues. There's some really deft writing here about family, friends and fitting in which is very nicely done, but overall I get the sense the book isn't quite sure what it wants to be or exactly who it's aimed at.