Summary
Just days before her sister plunged to her death, Julia ignored her call. Now Nel is dead. They say she jumped. And Jules has to return to her sister’s house, her childhood home, to care for her daughter, Lena, and to face the mystery of Nel’s death.
But she is afraid of returning. Her long-buried memories of the old Mill House and the town’s secret drowning history terrify her. The Drowning Pool has already claimed the lives of four women. And what’s more, she also knows that Nel would never jump.
Into The Water
My rating
3 / 5
Self-Purchased copy
Author
Paula Hawkins
Publisher
Penguin Random House UK
Genre
Mystery/Thriller
Number of Pages
426
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My Review
I wasn’t madly turning the pages, as is printed in many reviews by popular magazines. I thought we got to the mystery in a very roundabout way, beating about the bush. It could have been shorter. It could’ve been deeper – in terms of the characters. And it could’ve been simpler. The back and forth in time was a little confusing, to be honest.
But I liked the way some issues have been dealt with. For example, the author defines rape as saying –“I thought rape was something a bad man did to you, a man who jumped at you in an alleyway, and a man who held a knife to your throat. I didn’t think schoolboys did it. I didn’t think they did it in your living room and asked afterward if you had a good time.”
Second is the issue of blaming women when Lena is frustrated with Jules saying – “I don’t understand people like you, who always choose to blame the woman. If there are two people doing something wrong and one of them is a girl, it’s got to be her fault, right?”
Also right in the beginning, there is an index listing the people of the town and their relationships, which made things much simpler.
Final verdict
We are given a limited number of people who would have done the crime, and in the end, the big reveal is nothing unexpected. Overall it was an okay read. I expected many more twists. The Girl on the Train did have a fair amount of them. I rate it 3 stars of 5.
Mystery fans might enjoy this one. The book covers themes of rape and suicide.
- Top Quotes from Into The Water -
“Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.”
“The things I want to remember I can't, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.”
“She felt it when she woke, not a presence but an absence.”
Paula Hawkins
Paula Hawkins is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Girl on the Train, which was made into a major motion picture.
She worked as a journalist for 15 years before turning her hand to fiction. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, Paula moved to London in 1989 and has lived there ever since,
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