Review- Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

Goodreads Summary- 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.

1. The writing style– There is no denying that Paula Hawkins is a fantastic writer. She truly knows how to paint and picture and make the reader feel fully immersed in the world she has created.
2. Flawed characters– Just like in Girl on the Train, her characters were truly flawed, and that made them much more relatable and believable.
3. The tone and atmosphere – I had this eerie, haunting feeling the entire time I was reading.  That is just a testament to how create the writing is.
4. Short Chapters- The chapters were pretty short and because of that I felt like I was reading the book faster. I would finish a chapter and think “well one more chapter” and then I would end up reading ten more chapters.  It really helped me get more engrossed in the novel.

1. Too many characters– I found there were too many perspectives.  It was so confusing trying to figure out whose point of view I was reading from and their role in the story.  By the second half of the book I eventually had all the characters figured out.
2. Different POVs–  Some chapters were written in the 3rd person, while others were in the 1st.  That was confusing for me, and I do not know that it added anything to the story.
3. The ending– The ending was not as suspenseful as Girl on the Train.  I did not have that shocking “NO WAY!!!” moment that I was hoping for!

If you liked Girl on the Train I think you will enjoy Into the Water.  In my opinion, Paula Hawkins writing has managed to improve in this second novel.  It may not be as suspenseful and shocking as Girl on the Train, but I think Into the Water stands on its own and will be an enjoyable experience for a lot of readers.

Have you read Into the Water? What did you think?

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