Reviews with content warning for Car accident - Open Water

Wow. This is the first book I have fallen in love with since The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois in 2021.

Let’s get into it… Caleb’s extraordinary talent provides the emotional depth I crave in the books I enjoy. I was hooked by the prologue: “It was strangely quiet in the barbershop.” If you understand how culturally rich a Black barbershop is at any given time, you know.

Through the characters, I was able to research paintings and rap lyrics mentioned in this book, which made me feel closer to them and their experiences and the inexplicable emotions.

This love story consisted of safety. Feeling safe in relationships is not a hard task once you find someone who “sees” you, enveloping yourself in trust, vulnerabilities, and safety.

I enjoyed reading about his role in the family dynamics. I appreciated how his experiences are revealed throughout the book as you travel with the main character, who becomes comfortably uncomfortable confronting the traumas directly and indirectly experienced.

Caleb’s writing style is poetic but not challenging to understand. There were several short chapters and paragraphs that I reread because of how lyrical his writing felt to me.

The second-person narration involves you directly in the love story. The complexities of life come out seamlessly in his writing.

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autismandniamh's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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pkc's review against another edition

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dark hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

If I was asked to review this story around the mid way point, it probably wouldn’t have been massively favourable. In fact, I came reasonably close to DNFing but in the last 70 pages, something happened. The core of the story unveiled itself, made itself known in a really profound way that I hadn’t expected. At just over 140 pages I hadn’t expected as much depth as I got from this book. It’s a touching and haunting look at the safety (or lack thereof) of black people amidst the persistent thrumming drumbeat of a system that is built to oppress and violate in equal turns. The second person narrative is so well considered and any reader can become engaged in the unease and feel everything that “you” are supposed to feel. I loved the protagonist and the rich storytelling was poetic, languid and sumptuous at points.

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tashtasher's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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rzh's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

i really liked this: so poetic, so rich, so evocative, absolutely heartfelt and the author has such a gift for putting words to feelings and situations which perhaps don’t semantically fit but really evoke its lived reality. even though the whole point of the book seems to be that it is a love letter to Black art, at times the references to this art, music etc. felt a bit… clunky? like during a scene when a song is playing, do we need to hear “This is This song by This Artist”? i feel like the lyrics would suffice, at times the long autobiographical or analytical details felt a bit Wikipedia-esque. all the same, at times it really worked: I loved the references to zadie smith and james baldwin, two writers I love too. also there was a technique the writer kept using, of repeating a phrase he had just used in reference to one of these artists and applying it directly to the main character’s life and inner monologue using the same words repeated later in the page, which I liked the effect of in general but was done so many times that it began to feel trite. still a gorgeous book though. 4.25 stars

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s1etal's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

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