A review by thebooknerdscorner
Salt the Water by Candice Iloh

2.0

A queer black teen faces discrimination and suppression in his public school, but this doesn't stop him from dreaming big and wanting more for himself. 

Cerulean Gene can't help but challenge the corrupt authority of his local school. Their teachers are homophobic, racist, and constantly misgender them, and Cerulean is fed up with their constant badgering. Despite this, Cerulean dreams big dreams of moving across the country with their friends and pursuing the life they've always imagined for themselves. One day, Cerulean's life is turned upside down when a fight with a teacher escalates and they find themselves unable to deal with the suppression any longer. 

This book has writing that is just as beautiful as the cover implies. Sadly, the execution of this book was incredibly lackluster. 

The first section of this book is a tad slow-paced, but I found this okay because it is a very slice of life book. The plot escalates about two-thirds of the way through the book, which had me excited that this book could have been heading in a great direction. Unfortunately, the ending of this book is just awful. I don't want to get too far into spoiler territory, but the last third of this book transitions into other characters' perspective and didn't add a ton to the narrative. The decisions that Cerulean makes late book are truly awful, and they had me not caring what happened to literally any of the characters. 

I do like the topic matter that this book explores including dreaming big, standing up to social injustices, creating things with your own two hands, and finding connections with nature. I found a ton of value in all of these themes, but I wish any of them would have been explored more intensely or have been strung together with more finesse. 

Overall, "Salt the Water" was a pretty lackluster read with a horrible ending. The writing was lyrical, it has great themes, and I appreciated how this book doesn't shy away from hard topics, but I just found the execution of combining the elements and stringing the story together to not be great. I would certainly give this author's work another try, but this one really didn't work for me.