This novel had me hooked from the moment I started reading. Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water is not only a powerful, poignant tale of the Black experience, but it is a novel that speaks to the soul. With its lush prose, vivid imagery, and deeply insightful commentary across the board, Open Water easily stands as one of my favourite reads of the year.

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists-he a photographer, she a dancer-trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence. At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.

Open Water speaks so clearly to the Black experience, but also, serenades the reader with its love of Black artistry and creation. From books and music to dance and photography, there is expression and connection throughout this story that frames a beautiful, heartbreaking novel. The emotion is evident, the feelings expressed so fluidly, and the understanding is so clear, and the need to empathise and understand tethered to your very being. Open Water will not give you the chance to look away, for its stunning writing and language choice will enchant you and dig its hooks into you, providing the beauty and the horror that encapsulates the very essence of this book.

The themes and characters in Open Water are so rich and lively, dealing blow after blow that will strike at your core. I was mesmerised by Caleb Azumah Nelson’s writing style from so early on that even the lovely, hopeful moments felt like gut punches. I don’t think a novel has done this to me in a very long time – not simply making me feel immersed in the story and like these characters are living, breathing entities, but making me feel like I am tied to these characters heart and soul. The emotions of these characters rock me, the personal connections to music have me reaching for my laptop to play the songs and feel what they feel, and there are so many lines in Open Water that took my breath away. I don’t need to be a Black man in order to understand. I, a white woman, felt the pain and yearning and unspoken need in my bones.

Open Water is an easy book rec for the literary fiction readers, the contemporary fiction readers, the readers looking to expand their world view and perspectives, and the readers simply wanting to have their hearts ripped out and sewn back in after 145 pages. Open Water is a novel I will never stop recommending, never stop praising, and Caleb Azumah Nelson is an author I have added to my ‘need to read everything they’ve published’ list.