Sunday, July 26, 2020

Review: SWANS OF ATLANTIS by C.L. Mannarino


14-year old Katrina had a crush on 18-year old Matt, her friend. She wanted Matt to be her swan, to twine her neck with his in an eternal embrace. Problem was that he was engaged to a girl named Sarah. Hurt slashes through Kat as she observes these tiny gestures between Matt and Sarah. But Kat can see through Matt and knows that he was inflicting pain on himself (cutting and drinking.) She reminds him that she won't hurt him—if only he could see that. 

Words are poetic and pensive. Story is sensitive and sentimental with a slow pace. It's mostly told in Kat's POV. As she goes through school, she tries to save face with measured words as her friends deal with their own problems. The whole thing eventually settles on middling patterns of academics and social gatherings. Sometimes it was hard to make sense of statements such as, “true blues and greens, car honks.” This book was definitely aiming for a literary sense and it had a lot of flowery and sensory details to invoke the reader, but the narrative wasn't as strong as it should've been.

My rating: 3 stars

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