Review Detail

Burn the Water merges Romeo and Juliet themes into a postapocalyptic England that is underwater after the ice caps have melted. The author has a background in screenwriting that is abundantly clear in the movie-quality descriptions in setting up a scene. While you can picture exactly what is happening at the surface level, there is a sparsity of interactions and internal dialogue that stunts the full potential to emotionally wreck the reader of Jule and Rafe’s epic enemies-to-lovers love story. Everything feels like a snapshot, and the depth of emotion is implied with a few gestures and sentences, and their interactions fade to black. I want to see the character growth and feel like I have crawled into their head and am living the story out of their eyes, not like I am watching a movie. In setting up the scenes, the story flows from Jule to Rafe with little signal, such as with chapter breaks. Just the next paragraph is from the other side of events.
The last chapter was brilliant in setting up the sequel. From the last lines of the book, we learn who is telling the story, which turns everything from third-person omniscient to someone whose family has passed down the story, and that is why it paints a picture without feeling like action unfolding in real time. That last line also lays out that the last battle succeeded, so you may not know how, but it isn’t quite a cliffhanger either.
The next book is scheduled to be released in March 2027, currently titled The Water Will Fall. I hope the author takes this experience in authoring this book and further works to develop the internal monologues and dialogues of the characters so they feel less cinematic and more realistic.