Review Detail

Olivia lives in a small town where the children are assumed to take after their parents. For Olivia, this means the town treats her like her mother’s suicide is contagious, and Olivia will follow in her mother’s footsteps. Everyone is shocked when Olivia and her three friends are instead involved in a homicide after Olivia’s best friend, Jamie, is attacked by his abusive father. Now on the run, their group has to figure out what happens next and how to keep everyone safe.

Drowning is Inevitable is a stunning, magnificent book that should be on readers’ immediate buy lists. Shalanda Stanley’s writing is beautiful and consuming. There is a strange sense of both melancholy and hope throughout the story, and hearts will break over and over as Olivia discovers how she and her mother fit together, what sacrifice means, and how far she will go for a friend. The sentences have a way of sinking their weight in slowly and calmly, almost leaving it up to the reader to decide how much weight s/he can bear.

This is hands down the best book I have read that captures and embraces the idea of platonic soulmates. The person that can mean the world to you, the one you would literally go to the ends of the Earth for, is not always the person you are romantically involved with. The author harnesses that friendship dynamic and creates a simply beautiful relationship. The interactions with Olivia’s boyfriend, Max, are also nailed to perfection. This is far from any kind of romantic love triangle, but the author brings in natural emotions that come from having to decide what path to go on when they all cannot go the same way. Each character, Olivia, Jamie, Max, and Maggie, are all distinctive and complex, and it is pure joy to read about their group.

With a plot that never lets up, more realism than a heart can handle sometimes, and a genius examination of the ties between a group of people and a town, Drowning is Inevitable is a story to stay in hearts forever and on the bookshelf for as long as humanly possible. Shalanda Stanley crafted what is bound to beloved by many, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.