Book Review: Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

Title: Into the Water
Author: Paula Hawkins
Publisher: Transworld
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 353
Format: Hardback
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Source: Gift--Secondhand Copy



A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return. With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present. Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath. (Goodreads Synopsis)


Into the Water is not a book that would normally interest me. However, my mother read and enjoyed it and decided to send it on to me, so I thought I'd give it a try. It would have been at the bottom of my tbr pile, except I decided to join a readathon this month, and one of the categories was a mystery story, for which this was the perfect fit. Overall, I did end up finding it a pleasing read. I loved the idea of the Drowning Pool and the mystery of the deaths there, and I enjoyed the way Hawkins revealed the story piece by piece through the multiple narrators, all of whom have a different stake in the outcome. For the most part, it held my interest throughout; however, I found the ending a little abrupt after such a slow build. All in all, though, I would recommend this to fans of the genre and those interested in trying a mystery/thriller for the first time.