A captivating contemporary whodunit… suspense churns and the plot keeps you guessing.”—People Magazine
“Highly suspenseful… all these intrigues are teased out with impressive skill by Ms. Hawkins, who tells a complex narrative... in a chronicle whose final pages yield startling revelations." —The Wall Street Journal
"[A] succulent new mystery… Hawkins, influenced by Hitchcock, has a cinematic eye and an ear for eerie, evocative language… So do dive in. The payoff is a socko ending. And a noirish beach read that might make you think twice about dipping a toe in those dark, chilly waters.”—USA Today
“Addicting… this novel has a little something for anyone looking for their next binge-read.” —Marie Claire
"Thrilling... we [are] kept guessing until the sobering conclusion." —O Magazine
"Mother's Day is coming up. This one's perfect for the mom who always has shelf space for thrillers." —theSkimm
“Hawkins is at the forefront of a group of female authors – think Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott – who have reinvigorated the literary suspense novel by tapping a rich vein of psychological menace and social unease… there’s a certain solace to a dark escape, in the promise of submerged truths coming to light.” —Vogue
“A unputdownable, smart, thoughtful thriller.”—PopSugar
“An intriguing pop-feminist tale of small-town hypocrisy, sexual politics, and wrongs that won’t rinse clean.”—Entertainment Weekly
"Contains just as many hair-raising plot twists as [The Girl on the Train]. This time, Hawkins’s absorbing and chilling cast of mothers, daughters, and sisters grapples with the implications of memory, exploring what happens when our conflicting recollections of personal histories collide to destroy the present.” —Harper's Bazaar
“Hawkins weaves another wonderfully twisted mystery.”—Coastal Living
“Readers will be locked in a guessing game until the unnerving conclusion… It’ll give you the most thrills and chills.” —Redbook
“Page-turner… a thriller that intersects complicated cultural narratives of adolescent sexuality, the often fraught relationships between daughters, mothers and sisters, and the relationship between ‘good men’ and ‘troublesome women.’”—Jezebel
“Hawkins has a real gift for exploring the manner in which we constantly turn things over in our minds, crafting inner monologues both rich and relatable… a lively, compelling, and surprisingly empathetic and humane page-turner.” —The A.V. Club
“Sometimes what we really need is a good thriller. And Paula Hawkins knows how to captivate readers with an enthralling and suspenseful mystery. Following her psychological thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins is at it again with Into the Water.” –Mic
"A page-turning thriller… Will haunt you long after this book is over.” —Bustle
"I couldn't resist Hawkins' anxiously awaited second novel ... scary and addictive." —Cup of Jo
“Hawkins constructs a bracing, knotty ride in which the ghosts of the past come back to haunt those living in the present.” –W Magazine
“Hawkins keeps you guessing until the final page.” —Real Simple
“Arresting… Hawkins is an ambitious writer, inclining to the literary end of the spectrum.”—Financial Times
“Into the Water" captures all the suspense and terrifying emotions of [The Girl on the Train], but it beams with a maturity in writing and in storytelling that will draw her fans right back over the edge... the novel also flows with an instinctual understanding of relationships, young love, devoted friendships and dedication to duty, familial faults and small-town paranoia." —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“When it comes to tension you could cut with a knife, no one does it better than Hawkins.”—New York Post
“An elegantly written tale that grips readers like a mighty current, guiding and taking them downriver toward the inevitable rocky ending and breathtaking plot twist in the novel’s final pages.” —Deseret News
“Hawkins is a master of waging emotional warfare among her characters against a backdrop of murder. Into the Water is one to read with the lights on.”—SF Weekly
“Hawkins returns to the rotating-narration style of her breakout debut, giving voice to an even broader cast this time… Order by the ton.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Twisty and compulsive… Hawkins skillfully delves into the psyche of each character, extracting their feelings, fears and fallacies, slowly ramping up the psychological suspense as she goes.” —BookPage
“The payoff packs a satisfying punch.” —Publishers Weekly
2017-02-06
Women in a small British town have been drowning since 1679. "No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day." So sayeth the town psychic in Hawkins' (The Girl on the Train, 2015) follow-up to her smash-hit debut. Unfortunately, there's nothing here to match the sharp characterization of the alcoholic commuter at the center of that story. Here the central character—Danielle Abbott, an award-winning writer and photographer who's also the single mother of a teenager—has already died. At the time of her watery demise, she was working on a coffee-table book about the spot the people of Beckford call the Drowning Pool, once her "place of ecstasy," where she learned to swim, now her grave. She left behind a pile of typewritten pages and a daughter whose best friend also drowned just a few months ago. Danielle's estranged sister, Jules, returns to town to identify the body, relive the distressing past that led her to flee this creepy place, and try to deal with her snotty, grieving niece, Lena. Many of the neighbor families are also down a member via the pool, and even after you've managed to untangle all the willfully misleading information, half-baked subplots, and myriad characters, you're going to have a tough time keeping it straight. The spunkiest voice belongs to a somewhat tangential policewoman who probably should have been the narrator. "Seriously," she comments, "how is anyone supposed to keep track of all the bodies around here? It's like Midsomer Murders, only with accidents and suicides and grotesque historical misogynistic drownings instead of people falling into the slurry or bashing each other over the head." Let's call it sophomore slump and hope for better things.
