Review: Watersnakes

Watersnakes by Antonio Sandoval
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I got a real fairy tale vibe from this book. It is a story about two young girls that meet at the beach. The parents are around but not really present for the story. Things start out innocently enough, but it moves into some pretty strange territory that sets the girls on a quest to save their lives. The story between the two girls brings in elements of a first crush, along with all the awkwardness that might entail. What happens after that is something else entirely.

The art is what attracted me to this book. The image on the cover was so great. And the interior art is just as good. It does a great job of capturing that sense of the weird that pervades the book. I'm not sure how old the girls are supposed to be (probably early adolescence) and the art can blur the line on that at times. Anyway, be prepared for some brutal scenes later in the book. It almost feels like a different story by that point. The progression works though.

Something that stuck out to me about Watersnakes is that at the end I wasn't really sure if the whole thing actually happened or if it is just some sort of childish imagining. That's part of what I liked about it. This uncertainty gives the book a depth that I wasn't expecting based on the first few pages. I'd recommend picking it up for the art alone, but the girls pull their weight in making this book fun and interesting.

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