Drinking the Ocean follows Murad and Sofi as their lives intertwine, where one loves the other romantically and it’s only returned in the type of love that a sibling would receive.
We follow this story first from the future as Murad sees Sofi on the TTC and then we venture back into history to see how Murad’s life was up to the time he met and parted from Sofi. Next we follow the same arc from Sofi’s life, looking at how religion and the death of her brother shaped her.
The book finishes in more recent history, before Murad is married as they meet again and spend time together. In this instance the love dynamic has flipped. They both still care about each other, but one as a lost love that they don’t wish to dredge up while the other holds out hope their previous rejection can turn into a flourishing romantic relationship.
This book felt slow, not in the same way that My Friends did where I was constantly discovering new parts of the characters and story. It felt slow as we examined the sadness both characters deal with constantly, one due to depressive symptoms and one attributed to the death of a sibling. I was never uninterested, but I also never felt like I needed to read just one more page before I could put it down.
So this is a quiet story about love lost and changed in the face of years. That may be up your alley or it may not.
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