REVIEW: Chlorine by Jade Song

• 📖 info

  Published: 28th March, 2023

  Genre: Horror, Literary Fiction

  Pages: 256

• 🍿 themes

  coming of age, lgbtqia+, mental health, competitive swimming, men are gross, body horror

• ⭐ rating

  4.25 out of 5 stars

• ❗️ content warnings

  • rooming/emotional abuse

  • toxic power dynamics between student and teacher

  • disordered eating

  • sexual assault

  • body horror

  • gore

  • self harm

  • mutilation

  • medical trauma

✿ blurb ✿

Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.

But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she's always longed to become: mermaid.

Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine - the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.

✿ my review ✿

This book has me thinking about it months after I finished it because there is so much to think about.

This is a story about a girl, Ren, who wishes so badly to be a mermaid, and decides instead to be a competitive swimmer. Ren spends her formative years in an environment that excuses abuse and perpetuates harmful beauty standards and ways of thinking. What becomes of her is because they made her that way.

There's a lot of content warnings for this book so please check those out before reading if you need!

I felt like there were a lot of important topics touched upon in this book in a way that wasn't subtle, but was so engrained in these character's lives (and, in turn, within our own lives). To me, these themes were also used as an aspect of the horror.

There is body horror throughout this book, but only sprinkled throughout until the end where it ramps up.

Although I found the book unsettling, it was very well written and structured and for that I highly rate it.

If you've read this, please let me know! I'd love to chat about this book - there's so much to talk about! And that ending 😱