Into the Water

Let me start by saying I loved The Girl on the Train. This is not the same book. But it doesn't need to be. We still have a story told through multiple points of view, unreliable narrators, and a number of unlikable characters. Then we add in small town secrets and paranoia to go along with a history of enough women drowning in a section of the local river that it is renamed the drowning pool. The plot moves along like the river in that it has its slow points and then we pick up the pace as the many layers of the story are finally revealed in an ending you will probably guess. At least I did. Still the journey had enough twists I did not see coming that it made for an enjoyable ride.

Into the Water is Paula Hawkins' second novel. I gave it a try as I liked her first one, The Girl on the Train. To come out right up front: I did not enjoy reading this novel. Before I get to the reasons, however, let me briefly sum up what it is about. Nel Abbott is found dead in the so-called Drowning Pool, a body of water that got its name from supposedly claiming many drowning victims. Her sister, Julia, who has not been on good terms with Nel, travels to the cottage where her sister lived in order to find out what happened. There she meets Lena, Nel's teenage daughter, the local detective and his family, the Townsends, and other locals who have their opinion about the drowning pool and her sister. The story takes the reader on a show more journey towards the truth about Nel Abbott's death, which was in fact, not a suicide.

The story is narrated from different perspectives as each chapter is related from the point of view of one of the characters. Obviously, a lot is narrated from Julia's point of view. While I usually like this narrative technique, I struggled with it in this novel. At the beginning it made it quite hard to figure out who all the characters are and how they are related to each other. Therefore, I did not get a really good start into the story. As I tend not to give up I kept going, but the remainder of the novel did not really change my opinion. Although the chapters were short, the novel did not really pick up pace at any point and I found myself dragging on and on without really being interested in what was going to happen or to be revealed next. Throughout the entirety of the novel, the plot did not catch me and I found the characters not relatable enough so as to follow the plot for the characters' sake. This is the reason why I could not really enjoy reading Into the Water and was left quite disappointed. Unfortunately, the ending could also not contribute to changing my opinion. On the whole, a perfect example of 'not my cup of tea'. 2 stars. show less

I wasn’t a big fan of ‘The Girl on the Train’ so didn’t go into this with big expectations, in fact I only started it because I need something to listen to when walking to work and my wife had it on Audible. I was surprised then by how much I liked it. Whereas the multiple narrators in GOTT felt like a gimmick and didn’t add anything to the book (IMHO), the technique works perfectly in ‘Into the Water’. There are far more narrators here, and they’re all convincing, meaning we end up with a mystery the reader has to piece together paired with a telling commentary on the effects of sexual violence on the victims. Whilst there are male characters, this really is a book about women, full to the brim with females of all ages, show more backgrounds and motivations. It’s compelling, emotional and satisfying from start to finish. show less

The vast array of narrators made this book a bit hard to get into, however after about 40 pages I was able to figure out the rhythm and flow of the story. This is a book about unreliable narrators, they are all viewing things thru their personal history and prejudices. It all makes for a ton of misunderstandings and false accusations. Grudges are held, secrets are kept and in the meantime, women are dying.
Hawkins does a great job of showing how each character's reality is colored by their own personal issues and beliefs. The results become more heightened when relationships and lives are on the line!
The pace of the novel is very quick and your sympathies will switch as you read. Well done!

Following up on the stupendous success of The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins has fashioned another novel of twisted motives and psychological suspense that pulls the reader in from the first page. Following the suicide by drowning of her sister Danielle (Nel), Jules Abbott returns to Beckford, the town in northern England where the Abbott sisters spent much of their childhood and which Jules left the first chance she got, fleeing unpleasant memories. In Beckford, Jules, the younger and less attractive Abbott sister, is confronted by Nel’s teenage daughter Lena, beautiful but moody, who, in addition to her mother’s death, is also dealing with the very recent suicide of her best friend Katie Whittaker. Jules, estranged from her show more sister, reeling from guilt for not communicating with Nel in the months leading up to Nel’s death though she was given every opportunity, and influenced by Lena’s unshakable belief that her mother didn’t kill herself, starts wondering if her sister’s death was indeed a suicide (the Nel she knew was far too stubborn and self-assured to do such a thing), even though all the evidence indicates that it was and she has nothing but gut feeling with which to counter the supposed facts. Nel—beautiful, charming, intelligent, a brilliant journalist and photographer, but also a promiscuous boozer—was writing a book-length history of the town, focusing on the legendary Drowning Pool, a site formed by a bend in the river, where centuries earlier witches and other “troublesome women” were put to death and where more recently other women met violent ends. The Drowning Pool is where both Nel and Katie died, and Jules suspects that Nel's research uncovered something that got her killed. Hawkins populates her story with a sizable cast of deeply flawed and troubled characters—including members of the Whittaker family, other townspeople, and two police detectives, Sean Townsend and Erin Morgan—at final count entrusting her narrative to almost a dozen of them. The story zigs and zags in any number of directions as investigators sift through the (often contradictory) evidence, as dangerous and embarrassing secrets come to light, and as suspicion falls on almost everyone at one point or another. At the heart of the story is the mystery of why and how Nel Abbott and Katie Whittaker died. Hawkins handles the unravelling of that mystery in masterful fashion, patiently dropping clues and drawing her reader along to a chilling resolution. Though ultimately not as satisfying as The Girl on the Train—in part because of a sense of fragmentation caused by the story being told from so many perspectives, and possibly by the author’s reliance on repressed memory to elucidate portions of what happened—Into the Water is still an unsettling, atmospheric and frequently spellbinding novel, one that turns a steady eye on the strategies people use to shield themselves from the consequences of their poor choices and bad behaviour. show less

“Some say the women left something of themselves in the water; some say it retains some of their power, for ever since then it has drawn to its shores the unlucky, the desperate, the unhappy, the lost. They come here to swim with their sisters.”

I actually really enjoyed this story. I love that it was gritty and ugly and showed an underside to a town. It didn't let mother's hold their grief calmly and it let many, in general, be full of flaws and human.

But it had a HUGE cast of characters - and every chapter (almost) was told from a different POV. It's much later into the story that the amount of storytellers dwindles down to just the few important ones, but even then it is at least 5 different ones. It was just too many. I loved show more watching all the pieces fall together and the ending was what I'd hoped - sloppy and iffy but very real. So much heartache and hate and anger and love and loss wrapped into one story, I just wish we'd only had a few POV's to tell it. show less

I was not a fan of The Girl on the Train. Because of that I was hesitant to read Hawkins new novel, but I'm glad I took the chance. I loved this one! Interestingly, it appears from reviews I've read that readers who loved The Girl on the Train despise Into the Water, but those that disliked her first work love this one.
In this book, Jules returns home upon the death of her sister, Nel. Jules and Nel have been estranged for years. An incident in their teen years has created a deep resentment in Jules for her sister. Still, Jules has to go home for her sister's funeral and because her sister was the single mother of a teen aged girl.
Nel has drowned in The Drowning Pool, a place of local legend where supposedly witches and other show more "troublesome women" have been disposed of. Nel's is the second recent death in the pool, and there is some question as to whether Nel killed herself or was killed.
The story is told by a variety of characters with narration shifting in each chapter. This gives the same sort of confusion that Hawkins created in The Girl on the Train with her unreliable narrator. I found this much more appealing because I could not find a single character in her previous work that I cared about. In this work, although everyone is flawed in some way, they are each also sympathetic.
There are lots of twists and turns, red herrings, and surprises. It kept me reading late into the night. I would highly recommend it. show less