A review by theinkwyrm
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer

3.0

This collection of short stories may focus on girls and young women, but by no means is it YA. Orringer deals with some heavy topics in this collection, most notably sexual assault, illness, religion, and death. I wasn’t particularly bothered that the entire collection takes a very grim view of humanity, as I tend to do the same, but I did think that that darkness was handled better in some cases than others. The only story I really loved was The Isabel Fish, although I think some honorable mentions would go to The Smoothest Way is Full of Stones, When She is Old and I Am Famous, and Note to Sixth-Grade Self. I thought it was interesting that the first and last stories of the collection were by far the weakest (seriously, how can we accept that a little boy literally got away with murder in the first story??).