Kadomi reviewed Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
Review of 'Into the Water' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The follow-up to The Girl on the Train could not be any more different from the thriller smash hit that blew me away when I first read it a couple years ago. However, I enjoyed Into the Water as well, and found it to be a page-turner, even if it doesn't have the pull that the author's first book had.
Into the Water is a slow, gloomy tale, a north English town à la Twin Peaks with the name of Beckford. There is a famous Drowning Pool landmark there, where a cliff overlooks the river, and where women have ended up drowned over the years. Nel Abbot was writing a book about the Pool and its stories, and now she's dead in the Pool as well.
The story has a huge cast, with many different PoVs, all circling around Nel's death, and the death of Katie, a 15-year old girl …
The follow-up to The Girl on the Train could not be any more different from the thriller smash hit that blew me away when I first read it a couple years ago. However, I enjoyed Into the Water as well, and found it to be a page-turner, even if it doesn't have the pull that the author's first book had.
Into the Water is a slow, gloomy tale, a north English town à la Twin Peaks with the name of Beckford. There is a famous Drowning Pool landmark there, where a cliff overlooks the river, and where women have ended up drowned over the years. Nel Abbot was writing a book about the Pool and its stories, and now she's dead in the Pool as well.
The story has a huge cast, with many different PoVs, all circling around Nel's death, and the death of Katie, a 15-year old girl who had drowned herself a couple months earlier. None of the PoV characters comes across as likeable in any form, and I bet that's where people struggle with the story. The story moves as slow as the river, and there's always an atmosphere of gloom and dread, and secrets hidden amongst the surface. Should come with a content warning though, there's sexual assault in this book.
The ending was a bit abrupt, but all in all I really enjoyed this.