Into The Water’s Back-Of-Book Description

An addictive new novel of psychological suspense from the author of #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon The Girl on the Train.

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.

My Thoughts

Like a lot of people, I read the book and watched the movie The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins back when it was all everyone was talking about. And since that book got so much fanfare I figured Into The Water (her second book) would, too. 

I’ll be honest. It took me a very long time to read this. Over a month went by from the time I started it to finally finishing it. And for a thriller/mystery… that’s a bad sign.

It just didn’t grab me as much as I’d hoped. Yep – that line about it being an “addictive new novel of psychological suspense” just isn’t true, in my opinion. 

But I stuck it out, refused to give up and finally, eventually got into it. About halfway through I at least started wondering where it was going and what had really happened to these women. 

I think the writing was fine and I grew to appreciate the characters. The setting description was pretty good; you can easily picture the quaint little English town with a river flowing through it, haunting the residents. 

But that’s all… just fine and pretty good.

I think the thing that threw me off the most was the lack of action happening in the beginning. The first half was mostly reflecting on past events and introducing the characters, and I suppose I felt bored by that. None of the emotions were strong enough to pull me in and when I got home at night doing anything other than reading Into The Water seemed more appealing (to be fair, there really is some good things on Netflix these days).

Additionally, I marked hardly any quotes. Not much stood out as especially intriguing or relatable. Maybe that’s because of the subject matter? Who knows. That being said, there were a few I enjoyed…

Favorite Quotes From Into The Water

“It must take a strange sense of entitlement… to take someone’s tragedy like that and write it as though it belonged to you.” 

 

“The things I want to remember I can’t, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.” 

 

“… I don’t want to not feel like this. How can I not feel like this? My sadness feels right. It … weighs the right amount, crushes me just enough.” 

 

“It’s like the feeling you get when you stand on the edge of a cliff or on the edge of the train platform, and you feel yourself impelled by some invisible hand. And what if? What if I just took a step forward?” 

In Conclusion

So yeah….  I really didn’t like that it took me so long to finish reading Into the Water.  That’s just not what you want in a book claiming to be suspense. As far as ratings go, unfortunately, this one gets a meager 2.5 out of 5 stars. Maybe they’ll make it into a movie as they did for Girl on A Train, and maybe it’ll be better than the book? Wishful thinking I’m sure. 

But if you’re a fan of British fiction or slow-moving dramatic mysteries, you might give this a go. Just because I didn’t love it doesn’t mean you’ll feel the same.  

Thank you so much for checking out this review. Be sure to read the other book reviews here. Feel free to share it if you think it would appeal to someone you know! And consider pinning some of what I think are the best quotes below. 

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