Paula Hawkins’ Into the Water Will Leave You Breathless

Into the Water revolves around two things: a body of water, and a collection of bodies, both living and dead, whose lives revolve around it. People have drowned in the river that runs through the small English town of Beckford for centuries, their deaths becoming larger than their lives, swelling like giant waves, towering over the people left behind. Have you ever seen a giant wave? Even on video, there’s something majestic and fearsome about it, but also peaceful and in a strange way; natural. Most of our planet is made up of water. Of course it’s more massive than we are. Of course it can consume us, and our secrets. Perhaps we want it to.
Katie, a teenage girl, is pulled from the water, dead. Several weeks later, Nel, a single mother, is also found dead. Her sister, Jules, returns to the town to deal with the aftermath of the loss as well as care for Nel’s teenage daughter, Lena…who happened to be Katie’s best friend. The web of trauma, secrets and lies these characters weave is best discovered firsthand, but the central questions are clear: Was Katie’s death an accident? And does Nell’s death have anything to do with it?
Jules wrestles with these questions, as well as issues from her past with Nel that have eerie significance in the present; such as Nel’s obsession with the river itself, the identity of Lena’s father, and a traumatic experience that Jules has kept hidden, which may wash ashore no matter how desperately she tries to drown it in the deep. Chapters set in the present are interspersed with scenes from childhood, as well as excerpts from the book Nel was working on about the history of the river—and, in a darker twist, moments from the lives of the women before they died.

Whether suicides, accidents, or murders, the deaths catapult this waterside community down a waterfall into chaos—just as they have every time a woman has shown up dead in that river, since 1679. Multiple POV’s (far more than were in The Girl on the Train) add even more layers of complexity, as Hawkins’ narrators peel themselves like onions: a local cop, Sean, who lost his mother to the water years before; his father, Patrick, a former cop who became unraveled by grief; Louise, Katie’s mother, determined to root out the cause of her daughter’s untimely death, and many more. Lena, too, is a complex and well-drawn character, full of guilt over the secrets surrounding Katie’s death. As layer after layer is removed, we learn more about them, what has driven them apart—or forced them to collide—and most importantly, whether or not they can be trusted.
This story is best experienced without bias or preconceived ideas, so I will leave you with this: Into the Water is a master class in tragedy, Shakespearean in scope and stakes, with a plot that will leave you breathless.
Into the Water is on B&N bookshelves May 2.