Into the Water by Paula Hawkins – Book Review

Hey everyone!

It has been too long since i’ve done a book review here. To be honest, i’ve read a handful of books since my last book review, but for some reason or another, never got around to writing about them.

Paula Hawkins is the famous author of The Girl on the Train which was a huge hit a few years back when it was released! I reviewed it on my blog then and i loved that book! So i had high expectations from this author as i entered this book.

It was released earlier in May, but my library had a huge amount of waits on this book, so I finally got my hands on it last week. A word to the wise…don’t go into this book comparing it to GOT. I kept reminding myself of that as well, even though at times it was hard not to.

Overall, I would say i have mixed feelings about this book. It’s definitely not bad but it’s not the best thing i ever read. I think i spent the first half of the book pushing myself to like it, that by the second half of the book, when it actually got good, I couldn’t really differentiate it.

Here’s a brief synopsis without giving away too much..

• Takes place in a similar ‘dark’ small town that GOT kind of did. Here, all the characters have a rich history and past in this town and generations have lived here for some.
• It starts with a single-mother who ends up dead at the bottom of a river that runs through the town, and leaves behind her 15-year old daughter and her estranged sister who is called into the town once she dies.
• Unfortunately, she is not the first one to have died at this river. It has been known as the river where many women have died in the past, including the 15-year old daughter’s best friend, Katie, just a little while back before Nel (the single-mom) died here.

The hardest part of this novel was that each chapter was told / written in the point of view of various characters in this town. It gets really difficult to keep straight who is who, how their all related or connected to one another, and that really takes away from the story. At least it did for me. I honestly wish i had a small paper with me at the start and I wrote down the names of all the characters and who they were – to have helped me throughout. But reading for fun shouldn’t be that much work, right? By the end, you’ll know who is who for the most part. But i think that was the worst part of the book for me and took away the enjoyment I could have had.

Similar to GOT, it has a dark and mysterious theme to it, and the whole time you’re basically trying to figure out who-dun-it kind of a murder mystery. I’m seeing pretty mixed reviews of this on the internet too, but let’s see if it has the same fame and success that GOT did and if it will turn into a movie or not some day!

Overall, I would pick GOT over ITW by Paula Hawkins!

Let me know if you’ve read this book and what you thought of it! If you have any more suggestions of books, let me know below!

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Until next time, XOX