S Reignite

‘the things I want to remember I can’t, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.’ - Jules In Paula Hawkins’ second novel Into The Water   the sudden death of Nel Abbott at the ‘drowning pool’ which she was fascinated by, causes the lives of everyone in Beckford to be put under the microscope. Suspense is built well in the beginning as we slowly discover the connections between each character and the tortured history of the drowning pool. But these falters when we are given too many characters to care about. Hawkins must be aware of the overload of characters as she includes a page that details the ‘People of Beckford’ all of whom do play important parts in understanding what caused the death of Nel Abbott. I regularly flipped back to this page as I was getting into the book, so it is a useful tool, but it begs the question of whether such a thing should be needed. With many characters to choose from, none of them a particularly likeable. From Jules...

‘She is in balance with the tempo and rhythm of the universe.’ -Rob Amanda Robson’s debut novel shows the consequences of asking questions that you don’t want the answer to. After wife and mother Carly asked her husband Rob what she thought was a harmless question about who he would sleep with, it puts their lives as well their best friends and married couple Craig and Jenni, in a constant battle to regain themselves. The book is promoted as one that Paula Hawkins fans would enjoy because it is a thriller that utilises viewpoint narration that Hawkins help popularise. However, it doesn’t compare to Hawkins’ thriller debut Girl on the Train . The first parts of the novel manage to build suspense and intrigue as the reader witnesses first-hand how Carly has let her husband’s response to a trivial question consume her and motivate her questionable decision making. But in the latter chapters, as the story starts to go in around in circles and relationships are constantly broken and m...