I am a high school student. Over the summer of 2014, my entire high school (all four years) read this book for summer reading. I experienced much difficulty in trying to advance from page to page in this book. I even surveyed my classmates, none of which enjoyed reading the book either.

Not even my English teachers enjoyed the book. Why? For one, Chang-Rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea has a very slow beginning and a very abrupt ending. The climax takes place in the last three pages of the book while the plot only gets its momentum after the hundredth.

Chang-Rae Lee jumps from one unrelated event to another in every page and mentions at least two dozen forgettable characters, none of which have any important meaning to the plot. He strays from the main storyline at least three times in each chapter.

The book lost my attention in every paragraph. For a fiction novel, there is very little dialogue. When there is dialogue, Chang-Rae Lee does not bother to incorporate basic rules such as using quotation marks. Every chapter begins with an irrelevant, three to six paged philosophical essay. Each chapter includes an irrelevant, two to eight paged back story of some minor character. Each chapter includes only a few pages of the actual plot.

I repeat. I have literally encountered zero people at my school, student or teacher, Freshman or Senior, who liked this book. Literally zero. Do not buy it.