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A review by emmabeckman
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
4.0
I liked this story better than The Girl on the Train, but not good enough to give it 5 stars (which does make me question my un-reviewed 4-Star rating of GotT.......). I thought the story was a bit more interesting than I remember GotT to be, probably because for that one I’m pretty sure i saw the movie before reading the book. I liked the way that this story interwove the history and the fantasy and the “real story”. However, I did think this story was fairly predictable. When elements were revealed, I sometimes found myself saying “well, duh” because I had seen it come from hundreds of pages before. Details in spoilers below. Overall though, I enjoyed the mystery and the way that Paula Hawkins whore the chapters with the overlapping elements.
SPOILER BELOW
One thing that confused me was the “wasn’t there a part of you that liked it?” quote that Jules remembers Nel saying. It seemed like the reader was supposed to have the epiphany along with Jules that Nel was asking about the feeling of drowning and not her reaction toward being raped. But I thought the question was about the feeling of drowning the whole time? Perhaps it’s my liberal youth mindset, but the idea of asking if she liked being raped was so disgusting to me that I couldn’t even conceive of it? I don’t know. It seemed like I was supposed to be like “oh my god she WASNT talking about liking the feeling of having sex, even if that sex was rape?” Hmm. I guess I just thought that was an especially disgusting element and I’m not sure that it was really necessary for a book published in 2017, even if the setting was 1991 in that part.
Also, why does Jules insist on being called Jules instead of Julia and why did that insistence only come up twice in 386 pages (and just to say “Jules (and not Julia)”)?
SPOILER BELOW
One thing that confused me was the “wasn’t there a part of you that liked it?” quote that Jules remembers Nel saying. It seemed like the reader was supposed to have the epiphany along with Jules that Nel was asking about the feeling of drowning and not her reaction toward being raped. But I thought the question was about the feeling of drowning the whole time? Perhaps it’s my liberal youth mindset, but the idea of asking if she liked being raped was so disgusting to me that I couldn’t even conceive of it? I don’t know. It seemed like I was supposed to be like “oh my god she WASNT talking about liking the feeling of having sex, even if that sex was rape?” Hmm. I guess I just thought that was an especially disgusting element and I’m not sure that it was really necessary for a book published in 2017, even if the setting was 1991 in that part.
Also, why does Jules insist on being called Jules instead of Julia and why did that insistence only come up twice in 386 pages (and just to say “Jules (and not Julia)”)?