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A review by kj468
Blackwater by Jeannette Arroyo, Ren Graham
Did not finish book. Stopped at 13%.
I received an arc from netgalley.
I had a hard time reading this, and ultimately won't be finishing. I read this through the netgalley shelf app, which
seemed to be the only option for reading it. However, lots of the pages had big white bars going horizontally across the
screen, even after I quit the app and restarted it. About 40 pages in it happened so frequently (pages 39, 41, 42, 44, 49-51, and more afterwards
all had the white bars), that I was completely unable to follow the plot.
Additionally, my copy of the arc was only 131 pages, despite Goodreads and StoryGraph listing the page number as 304, so I suspect this is a sample despite not being listed as such on netgalley.
This problem making the copy illegible began shortly after a troubling scene where one character (I presume a bully)
forcibly grabs a disabled character's wheelchair and pushes him in a lake. I am not a wheelchair user, and found this
extremely alarming; I understand this character is supposed to be a bully, but I wasn't prepared for blatant ableism.
As a result of these two issues, I will not be finishing this book. If my copy were legible, I would likely muddle through
until the end (at least of the sample) but because the content was uncomfortable, I won't be going through the trouble of obtaining a more legible copy.
Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for providing me with an arc to review.
cw: ableism
I had a hard time reading this, and ultimately won't be finishing. I read this through the netgalley shelf app, which
seemed to be the only option for reading it. However, lots of the pages had big white bars going horizontally across the
screen, even after I quit the app and restarted it. About 40 pages in it happened so frequently (pages 39, 41, 42, 44, 49-51, and more afterwards
all had the white bars), that I was completely unable to follow the plot.
Additionally, my copy of the arc was only 131 pages, despite Goodreads and StoryGraph listing the page number as 304, so I suspect this is a sample despite not being listed as such on netgalley.
This problem making the copy illegible began shortly after a troubling scene where one character (I presume a bully)
forcibly grabs a disabled character's wheelchair and pushes him in a lake. I am not a wheelchair user, and found this
extremely alarming; I understand this character is supposed to be a bully, but I wasn't prepared for blatant ableism.
As a result of these two issues, I will not be finishing this book. If my copy were legible, I would likely muddle through
until the end (at least of the sample) but because the content was uncomfortable, I won't be going through the trouble of obtaining a more legible copy.
Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for providing me with an arc to review.
cw: ableism
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism