Something in the Water

The book did not have a satisfying conclusion.

There was little ending and it felt rushed.

This is was such a juicy summer thriller, I absolutely loved it! I'm here for all the thrillers, bring them on! ❤️

this book hits on all cylinders. Fantastic grab-you beginning, brilliant and original inciting incident that leads the reader through the well plotted unraveling of a complex story line. great how all the pieces come together. This was such a satisfying read. I recommend it all the time.

3.7 / 5.

This was a solidly entertaining thriller, with main characters who keep you guessing. I'd give it a 4 if not for the ending which, while satisfactory, felt like it was missing a few ingredients. Nonetheless, this was a really enjoyable page-turner which delivered on an interesting premise.

3 or 4 stars? I wanted to know how it ended, but I have read about more pleasant people.

Surprisingly good. It was a slow burn, but definitely felt more realistic than other one-off thrillers out there.

So I picked this book up knowing it was in the mystery/thriller drama but without knowledge of the plot. I read a lot of books in this genre so I felt like I knew what was coming but I was pleasantly surprised that this did not turn out exactly the way I had expected. Reminded me big time of the action movies you see your dads watching on late night tv mixed with a Netflix prison documentary. All in all was a pretty good and quick read! I hope Catherine Steadman continues to write for this genre because I enjoyed it.

One of these days I'm going to finish a book I actually, honestly like. Today is not that day.

I had hopes. That first paragraph? That first chapter? Wow. Fantastic. From there though? The timeline rolled back 3 months and it was all downhill. My curiosity while initially piqued, turned into boredom, scoffing and page counting. At first I thought Erin could be (and should have been) an empathetic character. She has a good job. She's engaged, planning wedding to the man she loved. A man who looses his job (which always seemed sketchy, but the author never does anything more than skim over that). And then something goes so horribly wrong that she's googling how to dig a grave. The problem is that somewhere between her crying about only getting a 2 week honeymoon in Bora Bora instead of 3 and her drunkenly opening a bag she had already decided they shouldn't be opening (twice), my brain went “OMG. She's dumber than a box of hair.” So yeah, there went any semblance of empathy.

Yet the hope from the beginning persisted. It had to get better. Right? Yeah. No. Instead the reader was treated to overly detailed EVERYTHING. Don't bother opening Google, just pick up your copy of Something In the Water the next time you want to know anything - and I mean anything - about a Glock. Or selling diamonds. Or how to choose the menu for your wedding reception. None of that mattered all that much in the end. Heck - there are characters - Caro, Alexis - that I still don't know why they're even present. The twist as predictable as it was might have worked if the author had spent a little time making Mark into something other than a 2 dimensional cardboard cut out. Instead if felt rushed and incoherent as the author spent pages explaining (imagine that. More explaining) everything that actually happened and was perpetrated by the real bad guys in order to hand wave all the plot holes.

This one could have been great. Instead I'm left with knowing that 36 cubic feet of soil weighs roughly the same as your average hippopotamus.

This was basically unreadable. The plot was interesting enough, but the only way all the things that were happening could happen was for the two main characters to act incredibly stupid and naive, which they did. At a point their behaviour was ridiculous, and I couldn't finish the book.

The first chapter was good I guess, because it made me want to find out what happened to the husband even though it was clear from the jump I was not going to enjoy this book. Why does every popular and well rated thriller have the most insufferable characters? At least this protagonist wasn't an unreliable drunk. (Are we FINALLY done with that trope? fingers crossed) I had to skim large paragraphs in the beginning, which I almost never do. MULTIPLE chapters entirely devoted to wedding minutiae?! (Unrelated to the plot mind you.) In fact, this book would have been significantly more believable if the couple had been married for a while instead of newlyweds.

If you skip ahead to the part where there's “something in the water” it starts to get interesting. I wouldn't go so far as to say I became invested, but there was some mild face-flushing, on the verge of becoming pulse-quickening, writing. The ending was unfortunately not a surprise, nor an interesting twist. There were certain aspects that I liked, but ultimately it's always frustrating and unsatisfying when a book ends with the sentiments “I guess we'll never know why that happened.” sigh Maybe I'm expecting too much from this genre?

The protagonist is an idiot. Think of every bad decision a character can make and she will do it. It started getting predictable.

The first couple of chapters are great... then you have to endure 30 chapters of nonsense... THEN the story gets better. Everything is repetitive throughout the book. I found myself checking how many pages I had left just so i could finally get it over with.

Such a let down.

I went into this with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the writing and the characters. It felt like a different take on the domestic thriller, not so formulated and predictable.

3.5

This book was a great read - it grabbed my attention and kept me wondering how it would play out all the way to the end.