The premise of the book is a good one, and I really enjoyed it up to a point. I cannot say which point without a massive spoiler, but it just seemed to jump the shark. Three stars for everything up to that.

I really struggled to make it through this book. While the premise was interesting the story was very hard to follow and I felt the travels back into time didn’t fit with the rest of the book. I found myself feeling for Heaven and her situation and wishing I could smack Grandmelia for being so mean.

I honestly don’t know how to really start with this book. This was truly a dysfunctional family. I grew up in one, but nothing like what Heaven has experienced. Her mother has been convicted of murdering her father. She is to live with a Grandmother who has her own personal issues. Then there is the Uncle who doesn’t come out of his room.

Heaven is bullied at school and then comes home to this kind of life. She then turns to some kind of supernatural drama that I totally did not really understand.

I never related with the characters and the storyline. The book started out slow and it never quite picked up and I related to Heaven with the bullying and the dysfunctional family to a point. However, I think the author went out on a limb with the other added issues.

I received a free advanced copy from NetGalley and these are my willingly given thoughts and opinions.

How Not To Drown is the fourth novel by American Professor of Creative writing and author, Jaimee Wriston. After her mother is sent to prison on a charge of voluntary manslaughter for the drowning death of her father, twelve-year-old Heaven French is sent to live with the grandmother she has never met. Amelia MacQueen isn’t quite sure how to handle this rather stocky, somewhat sullen, girl.

Having never raised a daughter and done an admittedly less-than-stellar job on raising two sons, (call me) Grandmelia’s ideas of raising an almost-teen are outdated: she tries to connect with Heaven via fashion and make-up, a former model’s field of expertise, not really hearing what is important to the girl. Bullied at school by “the meanest mean girl in mean girl history”, Heaven’s desire to compete with the mean girls is not indulged, but she does prove a talented swimmer.

Heaven finds greater rapport with her Uncle Daniel, a forty-two-year-old agoraphobic recluse who keeps to his bedroom, but observes the daytime world through its sounds and strategically-placed holes in his walls. From his window, he has an exclusively visual relationship with his thirty-seven-year-old neighbour, Mercy, relegated in her mother’s garage due to anger issues.

Daniel tells Heaven stories of faeries, selkies and sirens from the land of their heritage, the Isle of Skye. They discuss what might have saved eleven-year-old Daniel from drowning in Hawaii, and why his younger brother Gavin, Heaven’s father, was not similarly saved, thirty years later.

Amelia, meanwhile, takes every visit to Heaven’s mother, Cassiopeia in the prison as an opportunity to further her mission: to make Cassie confess to what she does not deny but claims not to remember, in fact, doesn’t want to remember, because it highlights her own loss of her beloved Gavin, something Amelia fails to acknowledge.

Amelia’s ex-husband, Leo French, one-time celebrated fashion photographer, is now a chronicler of decay and has a paranoia about drones, wiretapping, and computer hacking; he can’t remember where his car is or even where he lives sometimes, but he remembers everything about Amelia, for whom he still carries a flame. He receives requests from Cassie to visit the prison: Gavin’s widow wants assistance, financial, against Amelia’s campaign, and moral inspiration.

Mercy, a diner waitress with a physical deformity, shows Daniel her “Collection of Broken Things” which she wants Leo to document in photographs, to appreciate brokenness for what it is. Is a relationship between them ever possible if Daniel never leaves his room?

Interspersed with these narratives is that of Maggie MacQueen, whose family were victims of the clearances on Skye, and details her crossing to America on a trade vessel, back in the mid-nineteenth Century. Maggie was lost when the ship foundered on rocks near Prince Edwards Island. Or was she?

None of Wriston’s characters, as quirky as they are, is instantly appealing, but they do grow on the reader once their back stories are revealed, so patience is advised. The plot takes in a bit of magical realism and perhaps doesn’t go quite where the reader will expect. A very imaginative read
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Alcove Press.

The Raw Purpose of Life

The characters and their names, the settings, the intrusion of Scottish history and the meticulous plot create an almost perfect novel.

Wriston populates the storyline with interesting names. One of the main characters is Amelia MacQueen, a grandmother, who prefers to be called Grandmelia to soften her age. Heaven MacQueen, the twelve-year-old daughter of her recently deceased father, Gavin, and Amelia’s son. , Cassie,, Gavin's widow, is serving fifteen years for manslaughter. but she cannot remember if she killed Gavin or not. The surviving son of Amelia (and divorced husband, Leo) is Daniel , a true agoraphobic, who cannot step out of his bedroom.

Near the beginning of the novel, we are placed in Scotland, the Isle of Skye, where their ancestors lived as one of many poor families who worked the land. When they could not pay the rent, they were tossed out and some found passage on boats to faraway places and were subject to possible drownings during storms. Drownings were depicted in detail. Some of the MacQueen’s survived, hence their heritage
.
Our main character is Heaven, her real name, who now lives with her legal guardian, Amelia. Amelia is smart, a former model, a tall thin woman who is quick with a retort and demands obedience to her rules. Heaven is an overweight adolescent who is bullied at school; she finds solace with Daniel who suffers, too. However, Heaven has a talent she loves; she is a swimmer and auditioned and won a place on her school’s swim team. The stark cruelty of the other girls is almost obscene, but realistic.

Despite her name, Heaven is no angel. She steals and her loneliness is unbearable. How is this family to survive and become a loving unit? Amelia is the key; despite her cringe-worthy comments, she aches for her dead son and wants his daughter to succeed.

The writing is brilliant; many of the scenes are stunning and despite the cynicism, Wriston’s story did not falter.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Alcove Press for providing a pre-publication. All opinions expressed are my own.

Heaven's father is dead, her mother is in prison, and she's living with her grandmother Amelia and uncle Daniel, an agoraphobic. She didn't have a good early life- her parents were addicts- and things aren't getting better. She's bullied at school and the only thing that's sort of ok are the stories Daniel tells her about their family history on the Isle of Skye. She joins the swim team but that doesn't help (singing drowning songs is not a good idea). A crisis forces everyone to look at themselves and the others. Each person has their say and to Wriston's credit, they each have a distinct voice. The Scottish history part of the novel was interesting but didn't fit particularly well into the whole. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

A raw and realistic story about family. Very ambitious in its scope, this novel left me thinking long after it was over. I really empathized with the main character, Heaven, and felt that her character arc was particularly well done. A good read.

This is a Women's Fiction/General Fiction. I ending up DNFing this book at 30%. The writing style was not one for me. I personally could not make myself care about any of the characters. Overall, this book was just not for me. I receive an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.

What a strange book and a strange group of main characters. Amelia has lost her favorite son to a suspicious drowning, for which his wife is serving time. She’s been awarded custody of Heaven, her granddaughter. Heaven’s parents were druggies and she’s never had a normal childhood. Not that Amelia knows what she’s doing. And then there’s Daniel, Amelia’s other son - an agoraphobic. His mother thinks he has Tourette’s, but he doesn’t. Heaven is being bullied - she’s overweight and doesn’t have any traits to endear her to the popular girls. “It’s not like Heaven has any talent or hotness or money, or anything at all going for her, like being good at computers or science so you can be part of the geek squad.”
The story is incredibly sad. No one knows how to help anyone else. Even when they want to, they seem to screw it up. My favorite quote involved Amelia’s explanation of the ability to love. “It’s like autism, dear, a spectrum disorder. The severely love disabled on up to the functional enough to get by.”
This is another book that I felt empathy for the characters, but I had trouble being drawn into their story. The story meanders. The chapters alternate between the different characters’ POV. I felt it might have worked better if we had fewer perspectives.
Interspersed with the story of the modern family, is the background on their ancestors, from the Isle of Skye. While I actually liked this storyline, I felt it drew me away from the primary story and didn’t help advance it.
My thanks to NetGalley and Alcove Press for an advance copy of this book.

I was initially drawn into this because of the premise and cover. What I read was a mixed jumble of grief, family dynamics, letting go, growing up and a supernatural element. The supernatural element is where this book started to lose me and it became unrealistic. The story did not know what it wanted to be. Thriller/suspense? Fantasy? Life lessons? I found myself not caring and the ending did not fit, in my opinion. Left it open to perhaps another book. Idk.

Cannot recommend and did not like this, even though I did complete. I strongly wanted to DNF this but I pressed on hoping something in the story would improve or change. Just a no for me.

All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thanks to Netgalley, Jaimee Winston and Alcove Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 5/11/21

This was an ambitous book and I liked the questions it raised about family and memory but there were parts (the supernatural bits?) that I felt drifted away from the author's strengths. It was clever and different, I'll give you that but it was uneven.

thanks to netgalley for providing me with the digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

this was a good book! i like how the author depicted grief and bullying in school, it was heart-breaking to read about but realistic. although there were some parts that fell short for me, those that didn't feel much realistic. some aspects of the story felt like a stretch and it took me out of the story where i was no longer immersed. however, still a well-written novel!

Great elements to this family drama, but somehow it all felt like a little too much. The ties to the past/supernatural elements felt like a stretch...too forced to bring both stories into one cohesive whole. An enjoyable enough read...just not exceptional.

“How Not to Drown” written by Jaimee Wriston is an affecting novel about MacQueen family facing moving forward in the aftermath of death of the family patriarch. Heaven has lost her dad while her grandmother (or Grandmelia) has lost her son. Meanwhile, Heaven’s mom, Cassie, is serving time for the death for her husband, but cannot remember if she is the actual killer.

Heaven is the typical awkward pre-teen, not just mourning her dad, but facing bullying at school. Overweight, she finds solace through her swimming. The way the teammates treat her is heart-breaking realistic. Unfortunately, Grandmelia does not understand, but Heaven is able to connect to her uncle Daniel who faces his own demons.

I found this to be a poignant story of a family that is not cookie-cutter.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for my advanced copy.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Heaven comes to live with her somewhat narcissistic grandmother after her drug addicted mother is sent to prison. Grandmelia, who wasn't completely cut out to be a mother, lacks empathy in the grandmother role as well. Together with Grandmelia's ex-husband and her agoraphobic uncle in the bedroom next door, the females learn how to create a family.

This one was so great. I was left with chills at the finish. The combination of these excruciatingly flawed family characters, the perilous history of the family, the fables of the sea; all called to me. I thought this book positively stunning and achingly beautiful, as much as it was filled with great sadness. Ah! This one’s going to leave me with a book hangover.

HOW NOT TO DROWN is the story of three main characters: 1) Amelia--former model, cranky old lady before her time, and woefully insufficient caregiver to 2) Heaven--her not-model-shaped granddaughter, who's just lost both her parents, her dad to drowning and her mother to prison for his murder; and 3) Daniel, Amelia's agoraphobic son who never comes out of his room and is obsessed with Scottish mythology.

Mixed into this is an occasional 19th-century flashback from a mysterious ancestor, whose scenes tie into Daniel's obsessions.

This is one of those books which depicts a slow-motion train wreck. Even if you wanted to, you can't look away. The adults made me smile and long to shake them by turns. For Heaven I felt only great, swelling empathy. Bullied at school, harangued by her grandmother, she was the heroine in this book--deeply imperfect, crying out for guidance no one was giving her. And yet in the end, Heaven, her grandmother and her uncle find their way. The ending is real--no neatly tied-up bows here; it's clear there will be a long road of healing ahead for all these people. But you can breathe, knowing they've at least found the right road.

Raw and frequently painful to read--you want to rush in and fix everything--this is a deeply gripping novel.

My thanks to Alcove and Netgalley for an advance copy for review purposes.

How Not to Drown by Jaimee Wriston followed a family trying to recover from unspeakable tragedies. Multiple points of view gave us insight on how this imperfect family truly fit together. Heaven was sent to live with her grandmother, Amelia, after her mother was sent to prison for killing her father. Yes, quite a dramatic set of facts and the book did not really lose momentum from that auspicious start.

It only took a few pages to hook me, however the flashbacks lost me a bit. I assume they were supposed to give credence to some of the agoraphobic backstories of Heaven’s uncle, Daniel, but in my mind they fell flat.

The ideal reader of this book would appreciate the nuances of a complex family dynamic, and have empathy for the intense trials the family endures. You are in awe of the strength and resiliency of Heaven as she attempts to navigate this complex dynamic to find her her place in the world. Amelia is also a sympathetic character, and the other minor characters are well thought out and add to the plot. The characters definitely will not be easily forgotten, but I did struggle on deciding my opinions as the book seemed to try to tackle too many issues at once.

I was provided a free advance reader copy from Alcove Press in exchange for my honest review on Net Galley. The opinions shared in this review are my own.

This novel deals with a family, reconstructed, after tge death of Gavin, husband, father and son. He has left a daughter, Heaven who is now totally alone since her mother is in prison for the murder of her father.

It is her grandmother, Amelia, who becomes her guardian. However, this family wins the dysfunctional award, since not only was one son a drug addict, but the other locked in his room with agoraphobia. Grandmelia, as she likes to be called, is totally self-involved and lacks empathy for Heaven’s fragile state.

Heaven is lonely and bullied at school. She has no friends and finds joy only in swimming. The novel comes to a life changing crescendo on the night of a giant storm when the family must totally reevaluate and reconstruct relationships.

I found this book wonderful in some parts and not in others. I do thank Netgalley for this opportunity.