At the waters edge by Sara Gruen

3.5 stars

"There was not a soul on earth who could have comforted him, because he was worse than heartbroken"

I did not like this book just as much as I liked Water for Elephants. When I saw it at the shops a few weeks ago, I was so excited I had to buy it, plus my local newspaper had a review in it which also made me excited (I'm an impulse buyer). So I bought it and wanted to start reading it straight away so I started.

Firstly, I wanted to mention how much it just reminded me of Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (which I read purely because my name is Brooklyn). Maybe because it was set in the same time period and maybe because Elias and Maddie remind me so much of each other. So if you were a fan of Brooklyn, give this a go.

Now, lets really rip into it. Starting with the things I liked about the book. I loved the sense of community and the friendship between Anna, Meg and Maddie. It seemed like the three of them really, genuinely cared for each other and I love friendships that pure. It was just a simply gorgeous friendship. I also loved the historical side of it, I adore historical type novels because everything is so different from what it is now and we always want what we can't have.

I liked that it focused around domestic abuse and the different kinds of domestic abuse. There was the more mental kind of abuse on Maddie's side where Ellis was trying to undermine and mess with her head the entire time but there was also the more physical side shown in another characters relationship. I think it was a good topic to cover and it was similarly covered in Water for Elephants. This goes with saying, its mild and not too gory or too much a trigger (hopefully).

A few things I wasn't a fan of were the characters, they just weren't my kind of people. They were written beautifully but I couldn't be friends with them. There's a difference between characters being likable and characters being badly written, I don't think these characters were badly written at all. I also wasn't the biggest fan of how the plot seemed to go on forever, Maddie suspecting things of Ellis, Ellis and Hank being dodgy as all hell, Hank always being the better half. It just droned on.

But all in all, if you don't like romances then you won't like this, its as simple as that. I liked, there were bits and pieces where I really had to push myself to keep on reading but I raced through the end. Don't give up on it because it took me a while to get fully submerged into the book but also don't go into it with the high expectations you might have from reading Water for Elephants.

This was a difficult review to write since I don't have too many strong feelings about the book but I felt as though it was necessary.

Have you read At the Waters edge? Tell me what you thought!