What starts as a sweet enough coming of age story becomes rather dark in the last quarter. There are two narratives going more or lass in parallel throughout the book until the stories merge more and more closely. None of the characters are particularly likely and Hartnett likes the sound of his own voice a little too much at times.

This is particularly obvious in chapter 12, which fails to describe a long (20 pages!), unsexy want session cum fantasy, with names after names of supposedly famous swimmers or Olympic athletes. Just like the descriptions of dreams are generally frowned upon, what is effectively a day dream should also be banned. It brings nothing to the narrative, and in this case is not even titillating.