Caleb Azumah Nelson is so unbelievably talented. His writing is so raw and poignant. This book is brutal to read at times but so worth it. 

There a lot of different forms of trauma and general difficulty in this book. I felt incredibly seen by the way Stephen and Deb feel about school, but everything I didn’t relate to was just as emotional, if not more so. 

I talk a lot about the difficulty of writing extreme depression and how rarely I find it portrayed well because that’s something I’ve experienced and care a lot about, but grief is a similar thing. I think there are few authors who can write it well. I will admit that unlike depression, I have not felt grief to such an extreme degree, so this is partially just going off my assumption of what such extreme grief looks like compared to the smaller griefs I have experienced, but also largely going off what I’ve heard from other people who have experienced such a level of grief. Caleb Azumah Nelson can write grief incredibly well, and where you feel there with the character. 

I didn’t love this one quite as much as Open Water but I really loved it.

This book was excellent and if you’re okay with crying, I highly recommend it.