Into the Water<\/em>. This novel, too, is beautifully written, even poetic at times. The mystery \u2013 or mysteries \u2013 surrounding the deaths of several women in a particular part of a river that flows through a small English town is intricate and deeply layered. Again, there are riveting psychological insights that gradually unfold, enabling us to better understand various characters.<\/p>\nAnd this time, several of those characters are people I find not only interesting but also sympathetic \u2013 people about whom I come to care.<\/p>\n
As the book begins, a woman, single mother of\u00a0a 15-year-old girl, is found dead in the river\u2019s \u201cdrowning pool.\u201d A few months earlier, a girl who was the teenager\u2019s close friend drowned in the same place. The town\u2019s history includes other women who died in the river.<\/p>\n
Are the deaths related? Are they suicides or murders? What is going on?<\/p>\n
There are even those in the town who communicate \u2013 or so they say \u2013 with the dead, adding to the mystery.<\/p>\n
The younger sister of the most recently drowned woman, long estranged from her sister, arrives to take care of her newly orphaned 15-year-old niece. She has her own dark secrets, as do the police officers investigating the deaths. The more we learn about people in town, the more secrets come to light, and the more we realize connections among various people. Then too, there are questions not only about who is telling the truth, but also about what truth is, and how memories can be unreliable.<\/p>\n
The audio version of the book, using five voice actors, enhances the story, making for a gripping presentation.<\/p>\n
The Girl on a Train<\/em> is good; Into the Water<\/em> is even better.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson INTO THE WATER. By Paula Hawkins. Penguin Audio. Read by Laura Aikman, Sophie Aldred, Rachel Bavidge, Imogen Church and Daniel Weyman. 11 \u00bd hours; 9 CDs. $40. Also available in hardcover from Riverhead Books. While I liked and was impressed by Paula Hawkins\u2019 runaway bestseller The Girl on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5,14],"tags":[165,966,639],"class_list":["post-2133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-mysteries","category-thriller-suspense","tag-audio-book","tag-into-the-water","tag-paula-hawkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2135,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/2135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>While I liked and was impressed by Paula Hawkins\u2019 runaway bestseller The Girl on the Train<\/em>, I didn\u2019t love it as much as a lot of readers did. My problem was that, although the writing, the suspense, the mystery and the psychological insights were terrific, I didn\u2019t really like any of the characters. If there\u2019s not a character I like, one whose fate I care about, one who seems worth of my concern, then I don\u2019t get fully engaged in a novel.<\/p>\n