Underwater: A Novel

Probably the most ridiculous excuse for a novel I may have ever read. If it were printed correctly, it would be a 50 page essay. Don't waste your money.

Underwater is a story that felt intimately personal to me as I also struggle with sometimes debilitating anxiety, although mine comes from a different place than Morgan’s and can’t be completely compared. I appreciated that Morgan was captured incredibly honestly and authentically, though, and so was her journey of healing and recovery (her journey is never easy and the boy she falls deeply for never saves her, although their romance is endearingly, endlessly sweet. She progresses on her own, building block by building block, regaining her strength and sense of herself. And even small steps are where she finds the most progress and are when she sees her former self, although at times understandably waveringly, reemerging with a kind of new understanding of life.)

There’s a kind of rarity to her realness, I could feel the depth of the way her identity was broken after a traumatic, life altering event that she felt like she unintentionally played a role in, that led her to not even want to leave the house for fear of what she could find outside the doors and walls that she had made her safe hideaway. Recovery is unbearably hard and some days you’re flailing about trying to breathe and other days your breath fills you more smoothly with a delicate assuredness. It is all a process and I thought Morgan’s process and moments of struggle and growth were sensitively, wonderfully handled.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder affects people in difficult, unpredictable ways and changes everyday life dramatically and I saw that in Morgan. I also saw how what she was going through felt like a kind of death and being reborn on the interior while her outside appeared totally differently. It just shows that people can look one way and be another entirely, which represents in integral, important ways that it is important to be gentle with people on each of their journeys because we all have unsaid burdens and struggles we have carrying around that can affect us and our mental health dramatically and in ways that are sometimes hard to cope with on our own.

Lastly, this book focuses on how life and how you view it can be irrevocably changed in an instant based on any given turn of events and that can be scary, but I’m learning that it’s all in how we process and work through complicated feelings, experiences, and emotions in a process of a kind of catharsis that makes all the difference in the most powerfully impactful ways.

I purchased this book about a week ago because it reminded me of, 'Under a rose tainted sky,' and decided to give it a chance. I'm so glad I did! This book was excellent, a real page turner. I liked how well written the book was and how clean it was as well, its hard to find a good book these days with clean, non inappropriate content. I definitely recommend the book!

This book was referred to me by my son who loved it. I recently completed reading this book and loved it as well. It is a well written, crafted book.
The main character, Morgan is well defined and believable as are the other characters in the book. I found to have great empathy for Morgan and
wanted her to have the courage to come out of the darkness and join the world and become all that she was potentially meant to be.

I look forward to the next book by this young, gifted writer.

Great read! Loved it! I look forward to reading many more by this talented writer.

This was a brilliantly executed examination of PTSD, of how a strong person can become weak and how allowing for that weakness can make that person strong again. A beautiful, moving, testament to human resiliency.