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Waves by Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel transl. Edward Gauvin
Published by BOOM! Archaia on May 1, 2019 (originally 2017)
my rating: ★★★★ (4 stars)
Goodreads avg: 4.06 (as of 2021-11-25)
Spoiler-free review
Wow, just wow. I put this on my TBR after seeing Destiny post about it and finally picked it up recently. This is the incredibly devastating, partially autobiographical account of a miscarriage and its aftermath. Even though I went into it knowing this would be an emotional read, I did not expect to sob through most of it — but I did.
This story was beautiful — both visually and in its message. My only real complaint was that it felt a little rushed and abruptly short. It was difficult to connect on a deeper level than “fuck, this was sad” because of that. Chabbert notes after the story’s conclusion that she had intentionally not written very much about her attempts to conceive, lest they take over the story, but I found this to be a weakness. While the story was obviously quite emotionally impactful, helping readers to fully understand the context of this loss would have added a lot and allowed more connection to the characters.
I definitely recommend this, though. In fact, I texted a friend just after finishing to recommend it to her. If you can handle the sensitive content, this is a quick read that packs a lot of punch.
Sarah Ames-Foley 