I went into this expecting a book that explored being in your late twenties. Instead, I read a book that explored three people being selfish for a year with no personal growth or any type of personal awareness. As a character-driven book, one of the key pieces of information is that the 3 main characters are all 27. As a current 27-year-old, I was interested. And while the rest of the description wasn’t quite my vibe (artists flitting around Toronto and hooking up with each other), I was still intrigued.
Getting past the first 10 pages was difficult, and finishing the book was a challenge. For being wholly character-driven, the main character, Sophie, is one-dimensional and lifeless. The whole book is written in a stream of consciousness flow that is almost impossible to follow. Sophie will go from complaining that her friends aren’t paying attention to her to reminiscing about her childhood to thinking about something she read in college. She, Alex, and Maggie, are all insufferable in their own ways, and seem to be living a life disconnected from reality.
I knew pretty early on that I was not the intended market for the book, but I can’t quite figure out who IS the target audience. I guess anyone who yearns for a life of actions without consequences, relationships without boundaries, and thinks they’re worse than everyone around them? For me, it felt like I was reading propaganda from a conservative parent about what life you live with an art degree.
Thank you to NetGalley and Rare Machines for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Giving this a 4.25. If you're a fan of Sally Rooney or books with characters that can just be so complicated and messy to the point it brings an enjoyable amount of stress, Mudflowers is for you.

What I like about this book is how it navigates a lot of the relationships and friendships the main character Sophie experiences. It feels so real and honest. Life is just as complicated and I love books that show these situations. Waterman writes so beautifully. I love how the sentences are structured and I love how there are passages and lines that just resonate with me so loudly. Mudflowers is full of emotion and heart. Its gripping when you least expect it and it builds so much urgency and tension that it catches you off guard. I wish there was more though

I really enjoyed this ARC, which publishes in a couple days. I rounded my 3.75 review up to 4 stars. I started this debut novel a long time ago (like, months) and just finished it. I became more engrossed in it the longer I read it. The story follows Sophie and her best friend Alex as they navigate the creative gig economy of Toronto in their late 20s. Sophie is still recovering from the recent death of her mother, but meets illustrious Maggie, and they quickly develop a special relationship. The three friends’ lives quickly become intertwined and lead to some interesting plot developments.

This novel explores the depth of different kinds of relationships, and what it means to let someone in. Similar to Sally Rooney and other authors, Waterman’s writing takes us into the hypersensitive and descriptive musings of a young woman trying to figure things out and find her place in the world. I enjoyed a lot of her descriptive phrasings and sentence structures, but thought there was too much random back detail that preceded more important dialogue that forwarded the plot. For example, Waterman would start a paragraph with a memory that runs on for a while and then dive into the pertinent info that forwards the plot. Those memory sections could be shorter.

I also craved more closure from the ending, which was abrupt and left me with questions. I’m not surprised the book ended how it did, but I think the relationships between the three main characters could have been further delineated. I did like all three characters and thought they all had a great level of depth that Waterman explored appropriately. The book starts very slow though, so I had to knock off one star for that.

Overall, this book does an exemplary role recasting what romance and family looks like, and is a great read for fans of Sally Rooney or similar authors. As always, thanks to NetGalley for providing me early reading access to this novel.

This book is kind of advertised like a book that could be compared to <i>Normal People</i> by Sally Rooney. Well... I don't think I can agree with that. I see what the author tried to do, writing a book where it is more about characters than plot, but it was simply not well done. The only thing the books had in common was the fact that there was a lack of quotation marks when using dialogue. (Why is this becoming a trend?)

I don't like giving 1 star ratings, but with this book I felt like I could not justify giving it more stars. For instance, the book was so not interesting once I started reading that I kept forgetting what the names were of the characters, and there are not that many characters with names in this book, so it should not be that difficult. The characters felt flat and incomplete. I even found them quite annoying most of the time. I just did not care about them at all, which resulted in me not caring about what would happen to them.

The book did not really have chapters, more like four parts and sometimes breaks using a white line. But to be honest the seperation of the parts felt off. It just did not make sense, probably due to the story being so jumpy and all over the place. It did not feel like it was written down with a purpose and knowledge of where the story was going. This got even worse towards the end of the story where I felt like the author did not want to work on it anymore and just wrote it down quickly to get over with. It was very unsatisfying.

(Actual 2.75⭐, rounded up) This book was......... I'm a bit disappointed because it felt like it was trying to serve up *so much* and yet it still wasn't enough? I enjoy messy stories about messy people, don't get me wrong, and I appreciate how this book delves into the idea of what being part of a "family" means, whether it's the one you were born into or the one you discover and/or create for yourself later on down the road. The characters were frustrating, however, in my opinion, because while I understand that strong connections can be difficult to let go of, it felt as though these characters had no true desire to try and forge relationships with others outside of their little bubble. Overall, I didn't hate this one, I just expected more.

I always feel so biased when I enjoy something so Sally Rooney-esque, but I like what I like, and this was perfectly executed in this prose fashion. Mudflowers explores everything contemporary and everything relevant with the human spectrum of emotions. I really enjoyed this. Bravo.

An interesting read, but I felt that the pacing was just off for me. I did enjoy the premise, and it certainly made me emotional at times. It just didn't grip me as much as I initially thought it would.

I’m still not sure how autobiographical this book is. It reminded me of Saltwater, if it had been a queer protagonist, or Paul Takes the Form of a mortal girl- not in subject matter but rather the vibe of it. I enjoyed this and I want to see the book do well with all types of audiences!

*3.5/5

This little novel focuses on love and desire between 3 friends - Sophie, Maggie and Alex. The writing is very Sally Rooney-sequel and was mostly just vibes with little plot.

Alex and Sophie are childhood friends that have gone through everything together after both losing their mothers. I admire their closeness but then feel Sophie’s betrayal when Alex and Maggie go behind Sophie’s back. Sophie’s feelings are relatable as she is growing up and struggles with something she calls “The Big Feeling”; a strong feeling of emptiness, of something missing. Everything is from Sophie’s POV and it reads like a diary/monologue, with her often reminiscing the past.

There were some formatting issues concerning dialogue where sometimes 2 characters’ quotes were on the same line and the lack of quotation marks made it a bit difficult to tell who was speaking (I don’t mind when authors don’t use quotations, but in this case the formatting made it confusing at times).

I did feel like it dragged on at times and I wasn’t really satisfied with the ending as I did wish I could read more about what happened in the future with the characters’ relationships.

*Thank you to netgalley and Rare Machines for the ARC!

it defo had its moments but the characters made me feel so overwhelmingly angry i thought i would throw a punch and people who weren't sophie didn't feel real enough for the things they do to feel real or justified or complicated.

Did not finish. I wanted to like this so bad but I lt felt like a chore when reading it. I finally just had to stop

Somewhere between 2 and 3 stars.

Sophie, a Toronto-based artist in her late 20s, struggles to define and navigate her relationships, particularly with her childhood best friend Alex and a beautiful poet she just met, Maggie. Her physical travels (to France and to her childhood Newfoundland) reflect her longing for answers to unresolved Big Feelings, unable to satiate these feelings in her messy relationships. Fans of Batuman and Rooney will be drawn to the emotion and relationship-centric story.

This is a fine debut, though ultimately I found it lacking. I had a hard time reconciling Sophie's choices with her emotional reactions, there were unnecessary side characters that were requisite for the story but not fleshed out, and much more telling than showing.

Perhaps a minor gripe, but I also found the post-structuralist references to be out of place in a book that is otherwise not smart enough to be pretentious. If I read another MFA baby novel that name-drops Derrida and Lacan without actually engaging with their ideas, I will tear out the little hair that I have, strand by strand. And do we really need a middle-aged Deleuzian astrologer pining after his deadbeat wife? If we do, he better be the main character!

I expect Waterman will find her voice in future work as she refines her craft, as her insight about the millennial condition seems promising despite some of the weaker points.

Thanks NetGalley and DunDurn Press for an advance copy!

This whole book is set inside Sophie's head, and Sophie is a confused, meandering, self-absorbed young person. She is not likeable - I don't think she's meant to be, but it made reading this rather tedious. It's a shame, because I enjoyed the beginning of it, back when I thought it had a plot. But then I found out it's not that sort of book, and instead we go around and around with Sophie's thoughts, which are mainly about Sophie.

This is a tough one for me to review because I liked it, but I also didn't. I read this right after "Something About Her" by Clementine Taylor because the plots seemed similar. For as much as "Something About Her" was graceful and left room for a reader's thoughts and feelings, "Mudflowers" is the opposite. This novel is dense and pretty much every single thing, thought, action, and emotion is completely spelled out for you. The story is a good one. The characters are interesting, but it was ultimately too much for me to really love it. I also was semi-annoyed by the MC.
I did like reading about Newfoundland and the stained glass pieces.
#NetGalley

i went into this one with high hopes reading the synopsis but i’m afraid this one wasn’t for me. i sometimes like a book with zero plot and just vibes but this one just fell really flat.

I usually like to read these novels about young people living their messy lives, and overcoming their messy selves.
I really wanted to love Mudflowers but unfortunately, this one didn’t quite work for me.

Mudflowers is reminiscent of Sally Rooney novels, but with less depth. The characters felt very bland and too far away from my reality.

I don’t go into these books expecting to find them relatable, I know I’m a very lucky person, with a very fortunate and normal life, but I do expect to be interested in them or in the events they are experiencing. I ended up feeling old, wondering all the time about their risky behaviors and where did their parents failed in raising them.

The writing was beautiful though, which made me love pieces of the book, while I hated others (hence the I believe Alex Waterman has a great potencial as a writer and I’m expectant for her second novel.

<i>I would like to thanks Dundurn Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

An odd little book – beautifully written and experimental in its exploration of relationships that exist outwith social norms and expectations.

Grief lingered in every page. The novel presented the loss of a mother as a wound which will never heal and the most debilitating of injuries – even though it is a pain which we will all inevitably feel. I loved the way that it described grief with intense abandon without ever giving the novel over to it entirely. Friendship became something that could survive the loss of a parent or the birth of a child. A noble endeavour that required growing up and a little bit of self-sacrifice. It was not romanticised, it was portrayed as a battleground with pain all of its own, but it was sanctified and held up as a new force around which to structure a life.

The novel’s introspection was also intense, in a way that did at times feel over-indulgent, but the protagonist, Sophie, painted the world around her anew again and again, sharing overlooked revelations about the ordinary lives of the people and the places she visited. Sophie’s extreme self-awareness often betrayed her, revealing that she was in fact hiding from or wilfully ignorant of truths about herself – her need but fear of intimacy, her ability to rewrite the past. She was a compelling narrator and she brought the novel to life in ways that made each page feel special and unpredictable.

Rating: 3.5 stars rounded up to 4
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for the digital ARC of this book! Mudflowers is a soon-to-be-released debut novel by Aley Waterman. I was excited to read it as it has been described to be similar to Normal People, a book which I loved.

Mudflowers is a stream of consciousness style novel in which the characters grapple with grief, vulnerability, relationships, friendships, and the struggles of being in your 20s. The main relationships dealt with are those between childhood friends Sophie and Alex and between Sophie and Maggie, who just met but instantly become obsessed with one another.

This book had its moments, and I found it really vulnerable, relatable and beautiful then. It made me think a lot about past relationships and friendships and I liked the characters and their aura of coolness and spontaneity. I also appreciated the representation of non-monogamous / queer relationships. The writing, although pretty, felt forced and overly symbolic at times. I would still recommend this book if you are a stream of consciousness fan and the plot intrigues you. I am excited to read more by the author in the future for sure!

There are a lot of books that can be described as “young people try to figure out their messy lives” that I have absolutely loved. The tricky thing with that genre though is that if you don’t connect to the protagonist, it can veer into self-indulgent rambling far too quickly. Such is the case with Mudflowers - a book I picked up because I loved the cover and ended up feeling thoroughly disappointed.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC in exchange for a review

I was excited for this one but unfortunately it ended up being a bit of a miss for me. It centres on a messy love triangle which perhaps should have tipped me off, as that’s not my favourite thing to read about… But I was drawn in by the promise of queer relationships and also different types of relationships and loving one another.
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My main issue with Mudflowers is that it felt too self-conscious. I could see the painstaking care the author took over each word, every placement, and that unfortunately conveyed a stilted and overwrought tone to the prose. Some things were over-explained and it felt like it was trying too hard to be introspective. I also don’t like it when authors go ‘Then he did something that really upset me… He did X’. It’s like my petty little readers’ ick, just really irks me 😂
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However, I did like the exploration of shifting dynamics in friendships, relationships and situationships. Where there was once banter and emotionally & intellectually stimulating conversation, the next moment no one wants to challenge anyone for fear of upsetting a precarious truce. Some of Sophie’s (the narrator) reactions felt a bit childish, and I’ve already forgotten how old she was supposed to be.
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Also, I’m not sure what the deal is with North America, but for a UK reader, reading the ableist ‘sp’ slur to describe movement (multiple times!!) is extremely uncomfortable. Please retire this word from your vocab 🙄