Only the Ocean has a really interesting premise. However the writing style was infuriating and the lack of commas took away any enjoyment for me.

This is a quick read (I read it in one sitting while I was organising my shelves) but that's one of it's best features. The story doesn't really stand out, it has a F/F romance but it isn't really a surprise and it just seems to be a collection of things happening to them until suddenly everything is fine and they realise they love each other and are now a family.

It does a good job at trying to convey the mind set of the characters and it shows in the difference of how they speak which I found okay and interesting but it gets old fast.

"Nothing was too much for a girl with nothing to lose"

* *
2 / 5

I loved the premise of two girls falling in love in a boat floating on the ocean as the world drowns around them. Unfortunately I found the writing style so incredibly aggravating that it made it really hard for me to enjoy the great aspects about Only the Ocean: fast plot, interesting universe, and cool main character.

Kel Crow belongs to a family of drug dealers in a world where the poor dwell in the swamps of a waterlogged world and the rich literally live in high towers. In return for enough money for her to escape her abusive father, Kel agrees to board a boat and kidnap a rich tower girl, Rose, for ransom. She has her baby in tow, which was definitely a completely unique YA plot point for me: I've never read a YA fantasy novel where the main character has a kid. Unfortunately for Kel, her kidnapping doesn't go quite to plan and her and Rose end up floating on a boat in the ocean.

I'm going to start off with the things I liked about Only the Ocean. I liked how the book wasn't overly length. It kept the plot moving and rolling with the punches. A lot of action happened. The universe itself was intriguing; with towers for the rich, guns, pirates, and too much water, the book felt futuristic and interesting. Lastly, Kel was a unique character with a strong accent that grew on me throughout the book.

Unfortunately, the writing style of the book was so incredibly aggravating and difficult to read. There were virtually no commas, every sentence was overrun with metaphors, and I had to read some paragraphs several times for them to make sense. It didn't have any kind of flow. Here is a couple of examples:

"Kel pulled at what clothes were still holding to hide corners of skin from the bang-bang rain, but no matter what she did the salt-soak still bit biddy bites from her flesh"

"Its orb was so big and fleshy it filled the dark with muscular bounce and Kel sat up to wash herself clean with midnight light"

Everything was so overly described that I felt completely emotionally disconnected from the plot and the characters. I didn't feel like I knew Rose at all. Only the Ocean definitely had some great qualities, but I did not get along with the writing at all.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of Only the Ocean

Unfortunately I'm not able to review this book as (comparing with the preview version on Amazon, at least) the formatting for Kindle seems to be wrong - there are random large gaps between words, some words are split in the middle, and the paragraphs sometimes jump strangely. I'd rather not spoil my enjoyment of it, so I'll buy a copy instead. Thank you for the ARC anyway!

I've held off on writing this review for as long as I can, in the hope that my opinion will change... but nah. The writing style was actually painful.

An interesting concept but I struggled with the writing style and that really impacted on my enjoyment of this book. Kel Crow is fifteen , living in a swamp with her family, and the victim of abuse . Her only dream is to flee to America so that she can have an operation on her heart, and in order to make that happen she must kidnap Rose, the daughter of an arms dealer, and trade her for drugs which will fund her travels. In the strange dystopian future of the world presented in this book, riots have broken out, the rich live in the safety of towers while the rest of the population literally struggle in the mud and filth.
Despite the strange and strained circumstances, Rose and Kel grow to care for each other, and rely on each other for survival in some very harsh conditions.
While the premise of the book was interesting, as I mentioned the struggle with the writing style made this book less enjoyable for me. The author has chosen to use minimal punctuation, resulting in long run on sentences which are difficult to read fluidly.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I found this extremely difficult to read due to the writing style. I’m sure to some it will be wonderfully lyrical but unfortunately I just couldn’t gel with it. The prose are overly descriptive and because of this I found myself distancing myself from the characters. I had no emotional connections with anyone.

The plot itself, if you can wade through the writing, is pretty good. It’s quite a short book, so it needs to be succinct and fast paced, and the story is creative. I love dystopian novels, and even if they all tend to follow the same patterns, I usually find them entertaining.

I just wish I could have got on with the writing, because this was a struggle.

I admit I've been in a reading slump lately and that may have a lot to do with the fact that I couldn't keep reading this. I got bored and confused. The sentences didn't really make any sense with the lack of commas, and even though this is an arc I think the commas were purposely missing.
I'm also not really a fan of this type of writing so it just didn't get to me.
Maybe when I'm out of the slump I'll give it another try but for now, I really want to find something that gets me going from the start instead of me trying to keep going without wanting to.