Tears in the Water

I really really wish I could've liked this. A book involving sports with pretty much every character being queer is in theory right up my alley, but this just did not work for me.

The story is set in a made up European country but really doesn't need to be at all so I'm not sure what the point of that was. The plot is also ridiculously thin and the fact that a majority of the characters are athletes doesn't really add to the story as much as it should do. The writing is what really lets down this book. It's surface level throughout and after almost 300 pages with Alex, I don't feel like we really know them aside from the fact that they're a swimmer, they have a boyfriend and they've struggled with their gender. The struggles with their sexuality aren't properly given time either. Is Alex on the aro or ace spectrum? Guess we'll never know. A lot of this is telling instead of showing or letting interactions between characters naturally develop and take place.

I also hate to say it, but the fact that so many different sexualities were included in the book kind of made it feel a little bit inauthentic. Queer people 100% group together and find each other, especially at university, but all the different characters almost felt like diversity bingo and it really shouldn't.

The romance happens really suddenly and it honestly doesn't even feel like the mc is that into it even though they claim to be. They won't initiate any kind of physical contact with their love interest (because reasons?) and they're just generally awkward around them. Sorry, but you should not be awkward with someone you're in a relationship with. It felt like they talked about three times and then were together without any proper development.

The epilogue also doesn't sit right with me. If Alex has struggled so much with their gender over the course of the book and does not feel like a woman, why would they still be participating in qualifying events where they are misgendered? It just doesn't make sense to me that we have internal monologues from them through the course of the book on how gendered terms make them feel (especially feminine terms) but they are allowing themselves to be misgendered because of their sport. Unless the author has written it so the Olympics no longer segregate qualification and events by gender, but that's never confirmed on page so I guess not.

The fact I rated this two stars instead of one is solely because I related to some of Alex's feelings on gender.