Is The Undrowned Worth Reading?

The Undrowned is a horror story written by K.R. Alexander about a bully being haunted by her ex-best friend who she bullied and accidently killed. The Undrowned was a book that didn’t really leave me with a lasting impression. I’d say that it is a book that you would read when you have no other books to read, and you want to pass the time. Although the introduction and the overall atmosphere of the story were captured well, more work could have been done on the horror elements of the story. That said, is The Undrowned worth reading? The book does have some flaws, but I think that it did some things right, one of them being how well the introduction is written.

Getting into the story is quite easy. It doesn’t have any flowery language about the setting that makes some people instantly close a book and do something else. The story places you in a first-person view of our protagonist, enraged that her ex-best friend did not do her homework. We get to know by the second page that the main protagonist, Samantha, loves to bully everyone at her school but most of all loves to bully her ex-best friend Rachel for something that happened in the past. It makes you feel disdain for the character because you can tell that Rachel already tried to make it up to Samantha but Samantha refuses to let her anger go. One day, Samantha finds Rachel near a river and they get into a fight. Samantha pushes Rachel and Rachel falls into the river. Time ticks by and Samantha doesn’t see Rachel resurface. Releasing that she killed someone she runs back home and contemplates her actions. The next day at school Samantha surprisingly finds Rachel at school but something doesn’t seem right. She seems like a completely different person now. She went from being timid and shy to confident and ready to take her revenge on Samantha.

A couple of chapters in you start to see that the roles have reversed in just a few days, as Samantha becomes the person we feel sorry for and Rachel—now an angry spirit—gets her revenge. Although you feel satisfaction reading about Samantha suffering at the hands of Rachel, you slowly start to feel more and more sympathy for Samantha as she tries her hardest to survive attacks from a supernatural power.

The characters in the book are not going to be as memorable as some other characters like Percy Jackson for example. In Percy Jackson, you rooted for Percy at every moment of the story. Throughout his adventure, Percy always prevailed in a spectacular way and that is what helped me remember him. On the other hand, when you try to recall Samantha and her adventure in this story, you don’t really remember her for anything significant she did. I will say that her character development was written well and K.R. Alexander did a good job making you hang around until the end of the story to watch Samantha grow as a person. Samantha also makes some pretty funny statements. The kind of funny like when someone is trying to be too edgy with what they are saying, “I don’t need them. I don’t need any of them. Friendship. Is. Weakness.” All you have to do now is give her a black suit and a deep voice and I’m sure she could act as the next Batman. I think the author could have added some parts where Samantha would try something clever to escape Rachel’s spirit. Something like this would have helped me remember Samantha as a character. 

The horror elements of the story could have been better. The Undrowned spotlights elements that correlate to water. Anytime you see the word water in the book, you already know you may as well drink a long glass of water now because you won’t be getting near water after reading what’s about to happen. If you have a fear of drowning, then this book is not for you because of how vivid a picture it paints of drowning. Another reason why The Undrowned is a somewhat scary book is because of how unsafely it portrays Samantha’s home. I think it’s safe to say that most of us think home is a place we should feel protected from the dangers of the outside world. In The Undrowned, you’d be dead wrong if you thought it was safe from an angry spirit who wants to get back at you for the times you mistreated it. I think that the horror elements were nice but were not as scary as I hoped. People say, “don’t judge a book by its cover” and I understand why because my expectations were so high based on the cover, but I was left slightly disappointed with the horror in the book. After I finished reading, I didn’t really find anything too scary to reminisce about. A horror story shouldn’t only scare you while you are reading the book, it should also scare you once you finish the book, wondering about all the “what ifs.” I think that a book should have you think about what you just read and find answers to questions. The Undrowned didn’t provide that for me which is a shame because this book does have themes like forgiveness and letting go of anger, which would have been perfect to reflect upon. 

I think that The Undrowned is a book that overall has good characters and is an easy story to get into. The book has many underlying themes like revenge and forgiveness that you can pick out while you are enjoying the story. The idea of the book is great, but in my opinion, it doesn’t carry enough scary parts in it to call it a horror story. The ending of the book sure was a plot twist but it felt rushed and out of place. I think that there should have been parts where Samantha researches the supernatural and why Rachel’s spirit is attacking her and trying ways to escape Rachel’s wrath. It felt like Samantha just stumbled through the dark and somehow found a way to save herself and let go of her anger. If you want to read a book that has good characters, you love a setting where it feels like it’s just you and the main protagonist, and you can’t be scared easily then you should read The Undrowned. But only if you are a middle schooler that has nothing much to do.