I’m still not sure how autobiographical this book is. It reminded me of Saltwater, if it had been a queer protagonist, or Paul Takes the Form of a mortal girl- not in subject matter but rather the vibe of it. I enjoyed this and I want to see the book do well with all types of audiences!

*3.5/5

This little novel focuses on love and desire between 3 friends - Sophie, Maggie and Alex. The writing is very Sally Rooney-sequel and was mostly just vibes with little plot.

Alex and Sophie are childhood friends that have gone through everything together after both losing their mothers. I admire their closeness but then feel Sophie’s betrayal when Alex and Maggie go behind Sophie’s back. Sophie’s feelings are relatable as she is growing up and struggles with something she calls “The Big Feeling”; a strong feeling of emptiness, of something missing. Everything is from Sophie’s POV and it reads like a diary/monologue, with her often reminiscing the past.

There were some formatting issues concerning dialogue where sometimes 2 characters’ quotes were on the same line and the lack of quotation marks made it a bit difficult to tell who was speaking (I don’t mind when authors don’t use quotations, but in this case the formatting made it confusing at times).

I did feel like it dragged on at times and I wasn’t really satisfied with the ending as I did wish I could read more about what happened in the future with the characters’ relationships.

*Thank you to netgalley and Rare Machines for the ARC!

it defo had its moments but the characters made me feel so overwhelmingly angry i thought i would throw a punch and people who weren't sophie didn't feel real enough for the things they do to feel real or justified or complicated.

Did not finish. I wanted to like this so bad but I lt felt like a chore when reading it. I finally just had to stop

Somewhere between 2 and 3 stars.

Sophie, a Toronto-based artist in her late 20s, struggles to define and navigate her relationships, particularly with her childhood best friend Alex and a beautiful poet she just met, Maggie. Her physical travels (to France and to her childhood Newfoundland) reflect her longing for answers to unresolved Big Feelings, unable to satiate these feelings in her messy relationships. Fans of Batuman and Rooney will be drawn to the emotion and relationship-centric story.

This is a fine debut, though ultimately I found it lacking. I had a hard time reconciling Sophie's choices with her emotional reactions, there were unnecessary side characters that were requisite for the story but not fleshed out, and much more telling than showing.

Perhaps a minor gripe, but I also found the post-structuralist references to be out of place in a book that is otherwise not smart enough to be pretentious. If I read another MFA baby novel that name-drops Derrida and Lacan without actually engaging with their ideas, I will tear out the little hair that I have, strand by strand. And do we really need a middle-aged Deleuzian astrologer pining after his deadbeat wife? If we do, he better be the main character!

I expect Waterman will find her voice in future work as she refines her craft, as her insight about the millennial condition seems promising despite some of the weaker points.

Thanks NetGalley and DunDurn Press for an advance copy!

This whole book is set inside Sophie's head, and Sophie is a confused, meandering, self-absorbed young person. She is not likeable - I don't think she's meant to be, but it made reading this rather tedious. It's a shame, because I enjoyed the beginning of it, back when I thought it had a plot. But then I found out it's not that sort of book, and instead we go around and around with Sophie's thoughts, which are mainly about Sophie.

This is a tough one for me to review because I liked it, but I also didn't. I read this right after "Something About Her" by Clementine Taylor because the plots seemed similar. For as much as "Something About Her" was graceful and left room for a reader's thoughts and feelings, "Mudflowers" is the opposite. This novel is dense and pretty much every single thing, thought, action, and emotion is completely spelled out for you. The story is a good one. The characters are interesting, but it was ultimately too much for me to really love it. I also was semi-annoyed by the MC.
I did like reading about Newfoundland and the stained glass pieces.
#NetGalley

i went into this one with high hopes reading the synopsis but i’m afraid this one wasn’t for me. i sometimes like a book with zero plot and just vibes but this one just fell really flat.

I usually like to read these novels about young people living their messy lives, and overcoming their messy selves.
I really wanted to love Mudflowers but unfortunately, this one didn’t quite work for me.

Mudflowers is reminiscent of Sally Rooney novels, but with less depth. The characters felt very bland and too far away from my reality.

I don’t go into these books expecting to find them relatable, I know I’m a very lucky person, with a very fortunate and normal life, but I do expect to be interested in them or in the events they are experiencing. I ended up feeling old, wondering all the time about their risky behaviors and where did their parents failed in raising them.

The writing was beautiful though, which made me love pieces of the book, while I hated others (hence the I believe Alex Waterman has a great potencial as a writer and I’m expectant for her second novel.

<i>I would like to thanks Dundurn Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

An odd little book – beautifully written and experimental in its exploration of relationships that exist outwith social norms and expectations.

Grief lingered in every page. The novel presented the loss of a mother as a wound which will never heal and the most debilitating of injuries – even though it is a pain which we will all inevitably feel. I loved the way that it described grief with intense abandon without ever giving the novel over to it entirely. Friendship became something that could survive the loss of a parent or the birth of a child. A noble endeavour that required growing up and a little bit of self-sacrifice. It was not romanticised, it was portrayed as a battleground with pain all of its own, but it was sanctified and held up as a new force around which to structure a life.

The novel’s introspection was also intense, in a way that did at times feel over-indulgent, but the protagonist, Sophie, painted the world around her anew again and again, sharing overlooked revelations about the ordinary lives of the people and the places she visited. Sophie’s extreme self-awareness often betrayed her, revealing that she was in fact hiding from or wilfully ignorant of truths about herself – her need but fear of intimacy, her ability to rewrite the past. She was a compelling narrator and she brought the novel to life in ways that made each page feel special and unpredictable.

Rating: 3.5 stars rounded up to 4
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for the digital ARC of this book! Mudflowers is a soon-to-be-released debut novel by Aley Waterman. I was excited to read it as it has been described to be similar to Normal People, a book which I loved.

Mudflowers is a stream of consciousness style novel in which the characters grapple with grief, vulnerability, relationships, friendships, and the struggles of being in your 20s. The main relationships dealt with are those between childhood friends Sophie and Alex and between Sophie and Maggie, who just met but instantly become obsessed with one another.

This book had its moments, and I found it really vulnerable, relatable and beautiful then. It made me think a lot about past relationships and friendships and I liked the characters and their aura of coolness and spontaneity. I also appreciated the representation of non-monogamous / queer relationships. The writing, although pretty, felt forced and overly symbolic at times. I would still recommend this book if you are a stream of consciousness fan and the plot intrigues you. I am excited to read more by the author in the future for sure!

There are a lot of books that can be described as “young people try to figure out their messy lives” that I have absolutely loved. The tricky thing with that genre though is that if you don’t connect to the protagonist, it can veer into self-indulgent rambling far too quickly. Such is the case with Mudflowers - a book I picked up because I loved the cover and ended up feeling thoroughly disappointed.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC in exchange for a review

I was excited for this one but unfortunately it ended up being a bit of a miss for me. It centres on a messy love triangle which perhaps should have tipped me off, as that’s not my favourite thing to read about… But I was drawn in by the promise of queer relationships and also different types of relationships and loving one another.
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My main issue with Mudflowers is that it felt too self-conscious. I could see the painstaking care the author took over each word, every placement, and that unfortunately conveyed a stilted and overwrought tone to the prose. Some things were over-explained and it felt like it was trying too hard to be introspective. I also don’t like it when authors go ‘Then he did something that really upset me… He did X’. It’s like my petty little readers’ ick, just really irks me 😂
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However, I did like the exploration of shifting dynamics in friendships, relationships and situationships. Where there was once banter and emotionally & intellectually stimulating conversation, the next moment no one wants to challenge anyone for fear of upsetting a precarious truce. Some of Sophie’s (the narrator) reactions felt a bit childish, and I’ve already forgotten how old she was supposed to be.
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Also, I’m not sure what the deal is with North America, but for a UK reader, reading the ableist ‘sp’ slur to describe movement (multiple times!!) is extremely uncomfortable. Please retire this word from your vocab 🙄

DNF at 31%.

I should have known in the intro when the author said her mentor was Sheila Heti that this might not be the book for me. But unlike Pure Colour by Heti, this book didn't involve turning into a leaf or incest (thank goodness).

I was intrigued by the stream-of-consciousness writing style and was following along for a while, but something in the development of our main character, Sophie, was missing. I didn't get a sense of who she was. So as the story progressed, she felt like the hollow center that everyone else slotted into. And even still, the other characters introduced felt like the shells of humans rather than fully fleshed out characters.

Unfortunately, I wasn't enamored enough with the story (actually quite bored by it) to continue on to the end. Thanks to NetGalley and Dundurn Press/Rare Machines for giving me advanced reader access in exchange for an honest review. This title publishes October 17, 2023.

The novel seemed to have veey little story and a lot of rambling. It read like a personal diary which isnt what interested me a lot. I didnt feel connected to the protagonist or any other characters as there werent enough scenes for mw to form an opinion of my own about them. I just knew about them through the protagonist. The thoughts of the girl definitely were relatable at many places but when they werenr i just didnt care for hee thoughts. But the book definitely had lots of good lines. I highlighted a bunch while reading it, more than i usually do.

This is a very thoughtful book. Admittedly, it took me a minute to get acquainted with the style, which tends towards monologue (I could see it adapted into a one-woman play), but then, after maybe 50 pages, something clicked and I began to enjoy it. Aley Waterman's bio says that she studied under Sheila Heti—fans of Heti's work will definitely enjoy this! Sophie, the protagonist, is like a millennial philosopher. She thinks so deeply (so, so deeply) about everything—I imagine because Waterman must think deeply about everything. You'll say to yourself, "Oh my god, Sophie, girl, chill, it's not that deep," but then you'll realize that Sophie is just like you and also everybody you know and you'll have to come to terms with this. This book is such an accurate, on-the-mark portrait of living in a big Canadian city in your late 20s that it was even cringe at times (in the sense that it was a little TOO real). It's clear that this discomfort is part of Waterman's vision; we get to experience every aspect the characters' lives, even (especially?) the stuff that is weird or uncomfortable. I was blown away multiple times reading this; the images and metaphors can be so intense and real. The plot points are simple—a platonic love triangle, a betrayal, a visit back home—and there are no crazy twists and turns, but I still found myself gasping at certain moments, maybe because I had been occupying Sophie's head for so long, and, for her, everything is life and death. Ultimately, I did not find the story especially memorable or groundbreaking (sorry!), but Aley Waterman's writing was exquisite and carried me through. I will definitely read more of her in the future.

Thank you kindly for providing this digital ARC. I enjoyed „Mudflowers“ by Aley Waterman. While it took me a little while to get into the story and the writing and storytelling felt a bit jumbled at times dipping in and out of the present, feelings, and memories, about halfway through the story did pick up and I found it extremely touching.

I thought our main characters Sophie, Alex and Maddie all had great development arches. It was a kind of Bildungsroman where I had the impression I could personally learn something from their mature attitude towards love and friendship. Heartwarming!

the first half of this book was a hard no for me — it was teeming with similes and included a lot of unoriginal language, ranging from cliches to actual ripped lines from the show fleabag — but i found the second half to have more going for it.

generally this felt like it was trying to be a sally rooney or brandon taylor type of introspective novel without quite having the material for it.

A compelling novel that grabbed my attention Fromm the very begging and kept it throughout the entire read.

Sophie is a glassmaker in Toronto, whose heart is divided between her two best friends. She loves them both romantically, but also as friends. It's complicated.

Waterman's style has been mentioned as being similar to Sally Rooney's. There's little in the way of plot as the story is character driven. Maybe it's because I'm Irish and closer to the lifestyle represented in Rooney's books, but I would disagree. To me they are very different.

Waterman's book is character driven, but it meditates on inner philosophy more than societal debate. Sophie also muses a lot on those around her - why exactly they are the way they are - in a way that doesn't come across as superior. She's simply curious.

She isn't necessarily likeable though. It's frustrating to read someone who seems to care so much about others but is utterly removed in their actions, keeping most of their thoughts to themselves. Similarly, she sees Alex and Maggie as nearly mythical beings, which their actions do not line up with. It's difficult to grasp how Sophie can be so jaded when it comes to them. They aren't redeemed, even in her mind, yet she's obsessed.

It's an enjoyable book overall, but I didn't connect with it properly and it meandered a bit in parts. There was often too much internal musing to even keep track of. The scenes that contributed to the plot were actually the strongest of the book. The setting was wonderfully written too. It was a solid 3 stars out of 5.