Into the Water by Paula Hawkins (Book Review)

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins via Amazon: https://amzn.to/3IWQxEc

What I liked about it:

• Unexpected villain. The Novel was able to hide the villain perfectly by making nearly all characters a suspect. Readers have to go through a series of “I think this is the one” throughout the book.
• Interesting scenes. It provides exciting scenes if you ever get tired of reading what really happened to Nel. There are scenes where it was told what happened to the previous women who drowned in that River.
• Finally getting the chance to get used to how it was narrated. Despite the difficulties of grasping the stories at first because of how it was told, it will no longer be a problem when readers get used to it.
• The book was a page-turner. There are no dull and idle scenes; each character holds something, and they are usually always on the run and either involved or interested in the main character’s death.

What I didn’t like about the book:

• It’s challenging to grasp at first. In the first few chapters, I still have pause for a while before reading a chapter. (Wait, who is Nickie, and what is she talking about? This kind of thing.) Each scene is narrated by a different character and different points of view. Hence, I really had to discern it at first, primarily when the rest are described through 3rd person except for Jules, who is narrating the story like she is talking to Nel.
• I find one character really annoying: Nickie, who badly wants to explain things but just drops hints or phrases and anything dragging while someone is listening. She just keeps on doing it until that character no longer listens and then complains that no one ever listens to her.
• An obvious revelation. At some point in this novel, one character revealed that he was the one who killed Nel, and this character announced it lifelessly. It was like, “Thanks for reading 270 pages. I will now announce that I killed the main character and another character.” Good thing that it was not the end of the story yet!
• A weird character personality. Since each scene was narrated by different characters, it leaves no room to know them even more. Nel’s nature was clarified really well, but I think Lena was a bit weird. In the first chapters, she was like a messed-up teenager who smokes cigarettes and even smokes weed. She was also real fierce, angry at the world, and hates Jules for ignoring Nel all those years… but it suddenly shifted to a girl that hugs Jules, wipes her tears away, and kisses her before going to school. Not really a flaw with how the story was told. I just find her really weird.

How it ended for me:

At the end of this book, instead of being ecstatic and wide-eyed about the revelation, all I said was, “wait, what?!” and then googled the ending because Nel’s death was resolved and revealed in just one sentence. This is not a bad thing though, I was glad that I could not guess the killer. I was just trying to make sure that I understood that sentence correctly.

• • • • • • Finished this on April 26, 2018
          • Rating: 3/5