LEFT UNFINISHED: H2O by Virginia Bergin

It irks me when I don’t finish books, but in the case of H2O, I just had to do it. H2O has quite good reviews, but if I’m honest, I can’t figure it out. There were a few reasons why I couldn’t engage with H2O ‘s environment and plot — first and foremost, the writing style felt too laid-back and casual, and the narration was flat, undescriptive, and even boring. This took away from the story’s intended atmosphere: one that is suspenseful, dark, intense.

Another challenge of reading H2O was how slowly the plot moved. Even after getting through half of the book, the main mission had not even started yet. According to the blurb, the book is about a girl’s quest to find her birth father after being the sole survivor in her area of a deadly catastrophe. When I stopped reading the book, she had only just lost her step father, and realized that she was now all alone. This may have also linked into the issue of the writing seeming very flat and boring — perhaps it seemed this way only because it did not change for so long, and maybe if the action had come a little bit earlier, the change of pace would have contributed a spark.

Part of me still feels guilty for not finishing H2O. After all, I admitted it myself: by the time I finished reading, the true plot hadn’t even started yet. Maybe I am being too stubborn in my love for drama and action; maybe I’m not giving a fair chance to books like H2O, whose plots just need longer to really take off. Still, it’s difficult to continue with a book when not only the plot, but also the narration, characterization, and setting are stagnant.