Review: Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

Publisher: Riverhead Books
Pages: 386
Received: I received a copy from Penguin Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review

Release Date: May 2, 2017
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Goodreads Synopsis:

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 Review:

Like everyone else in the world, I fell in love with the mystery of Paula's first novel The Girl on the Train. It was the type of book that kept me on my toes and I was guessing throughout the whole story, and when I came to the end, I was still left so surprised. So naturally, after hearing about this new book I had to jump right in as soon as I received the book. 

This book definitely has a great mystery surrounding it, me being someone who is already nervous in water (I am not a great swimmer at all!), this book had me a little uncomfortable at times. But, sadly, as I read this story I compared it to her first one (as much as I tried not to it was difficult). I can't say that this book lives up to what The Girl on the Train was, I had a hard time because there were so many characters involved, it took me awhile to catch up to which character I was following at one time.

There were some characters that I wanted to follow more often and I felt that with the amount of characters I lost out on getting deeper into their thoughts.Paula goes back in time showing how history may have had a hand, and yet I felt like if the book was longer there could have been more details.  Despite this, the story still drew me in, something about how everyone's stories came together, especially the stories of these women ending up in the water... how did these two women who are a generation apart end up with the same fate, what about their lives were intertwined? But more so, the way Paula goes into the aftermath and how everyone else has been affected by these tragedies is what really kept me going with this story.

This book may not be anything like Paula's first novel, and yet she still writes a mystery that will leave you guessing. This book just left me wanting a little more from the characters in the end, yet still had me intrigued as to what happened and why. Though I did not like this one as much as The Girl On The Train, I still think I will give Paula another try with her next book, her mysteries are gripping enough to keep me intrigued!