Into the Water - book club discussion, all welcome!

[ufcasey]

Today is the day for our eleventh book club discussion! The book picked for this month was Into the Water by Paula Hawkins.

Just to help get you thinking, if you have a hard time figuring out what you want to say, there are some questions below that I found online. You definitely don't have to answer any of them!

Things to potentially consider:

1. Within the novel there are several inappropriate relationships — Katie (Lena's teenage friend) and Mark (their teacher); Sean (married to Helen who works at Lena's school) and Nel (Lena's mom); Helen (Sean's wife) and Patrick (Sean's father). How do you feel about this - interesting drama or overkill?

2. Jules and Nel’s estrangement hinges on a misinterpretation of an event in their past involving Nel's boyfriend/Jules' rapist. How did you feel about this?

3. Grief and guilt play large roles in the motivations of the characters in this book and varies widely between the characters reacting to the same event (Katie's death and Nel's death). How did this add or detract from the story for you?

4. There are a large number of character narrators in this book - 15 by my count. How did you feel about this? Any characters you wish you 'saw through the eyes' of more? Any you wish had been eliminated?

5. There's a lot of revelations at the end of the book - Katie's relationship with Mark, Nel's relationship with Sean, Nel and Jules' estrangement being due to Jules misunderstanding how much Nel knew about her rape, Patrick's murder of his wife, and Sean's murder of Nel. Did any of these stand out to you more than others?

As always, all opinions are welcome and anyone may join in!

[bex]

I was so-so on this book. I liked it because it was a fast read but I think my expectations of it were too high.

The book annoyed me because I felt she was trying really hard to recreate Girl on the Train - the different narrators, the good guy who ends up being not so good and is the killer, etc. had I not read Girl on the Train I think I would have had more positive feelings about this one.

I could not figure out Nel's obsession with the water. I mean I know the whole story could not have really happened without it, but it just seemed weird and very forced to me, like Hawkins was trying very hard to create an irony that fell flat.

I did find the big reveal surprising, not because Sean killed her, but because it seemed to be an accident amidst a flashback of sorts.

[ufcasey]

Tagging people who might have read this book:
bex, rainbowchip, hurricanedrunk, mrspez07, travella, cleo29, majesty318, specialk, anglashly, pandora89

[hurricanedrunk]

I wasn't a huge fan of this book. It took me awhile to get into it - all the character switching was confusing and it took awhile to connect with any of them. It felt like as soon as I got into a story line/character, it got switched up.

Part of me thought the twist at the end would solve all the mysteries instead each one had it's own side story. I was surprised by all of them especially when it came out the Sean killed Nel.

[ufcasey]

So, I never read The Girl on the Train, and I didn't see the movie either so I can't really compare this book to that one. But I thought this book suffered from WAY too many characters. The stories of the other women who died at the 'suicide pool' (other than Nel, Katie, and Patrick's wife), could have all been removed from the story - I didn't see their purpose and they didn't really add anything to the story. Same with the crazy Nickie lady. And the viewpoint of Katie's little brother. Just editing that down would have helped. It also took a while for me to get interested in the story because there were just so many inexplicable reactions by every single character - Jules not being all that sad about the death of her sister Nel, Lena being so convinced that her mother did commit suicide, Katie's mother being so mad at Nel, Mark telling us he lied to the police about his last interaction with Nel before she died, Sean the police officer acting weirdly towards the outside police woman, Nickie just being crazy-ish, etc. It was all a bit much. There needed to be a lot more normalcy in the beginning of the book because all of the weirdness was off-putting to me, not something where I wanted to keep reading to figure out what was going on (which is what I imagine the author was intending to do instead). Once things started to be revealed like Katie's relationship with Mark, I finally became interested.

I thought the truth behind the fight between Nel and Jules was very upsetting and sad. I didn't have much of an emotional reaction to the truth behind Patrick murdering his wife and the Sean murdering Nel.

[rainbowchip]

I agree that there were way too many characters/POVs. That along with the strange reactions everyone had to everything made me not connect at all to any of the characters. I really didn't care too much.
I also felt like the whole "misunderstanding" about what happened to Jules was unrealistic. I don't see how it didn't come out sooner.

I feel like Gone Girl has ruin these books for me. I expect the shock of the GG twist in all of these and they are no where near as good.

[bex]

ufcasey, in Girl on the Train she switches narrators as well but its a lot more interesting and adds to the suspense. I think its hard because constantly switching narrators is going to work really well in some settings but it has to be really well planned, in my opinion, and here it just felt like she was trying to recreate something that had worked before.

[bex]

Nov 30, 2017 13:00:53 GMT -5 rainbowchip said:

I agree that there were way too many characters/POVs. That along with the strange reactions everyone had to everything made me not connect at all to any of the characters. I really didn't care too much.
I also felt like the whole "misunderstanding" about what happened to Jules was unrealistic. I don't see how it didn't come out sooner.

I feel like Gone Girl has ruin these books for me. I expect the shock of the GG twist in all of these and they are no where near as good.

Yeah I felt like with the different narrators, and ALL the reveals, it was just too much and I didn't really care by the end. I also never liked how they presented Nel so I never really cared how she died (suicide, murder, accident). So at the end I was kind of like, "oh. interesting. okay."

[ufcasey]

Yeah I feel like if we had gotten to know Nel in some way that didn't reveal her relationship with Sean, maybe via more flashbacks but from her point of view, I would have cared more about who killed her. I don't mind books with narrators switching, even multiple ones. But 'multiple' and '15' are two very different things! LOL!

I agree that the situation with the misunderstanding between Jules and Nel was implausible. I mean at NO POINT did Jules say get mad enough to say something to Nel about it or vice versa? Especially something this big and when your sister is still actively trying to have a relationship with you for years later? Ok.

I have not read Gone Girl either LOL.

[travella]

I didn't care for this book. From what little I can remember about the book, I had many of problems everyone has already stated.

[Nonny]

I just finished it this afternoon, and I feel like I enjoyed the story more overall than Girl on the Train (I hated every last one of the characters in that book), but OMG, the number of different POVs was absolutely ridiculous.

Newsflash - Paula Hawkins, you are not GRRM, and you should not be trying to give us a POV chapter for every.single.fucking.character. I'm surprised she didn't pull a Stephen King and give a chapter from the point of view of the drowned tabby cat (see: POV from the woodchuck in Under the Dome).

Also, she dragged out the ending forever to give us an update on what happened to all of the characters and give us the "twist" reveal about Sean, but didn't bother to say what happened to Mark (even with Lena's previous chapters hinting that she did *something* to him and he got what he deserved).  NOT SATISFYING!

I think I'm done with Hawkins kind of like I'm done with Kristin Hannah -- too formulaic and not worth my valuable reading time on something that will leave me feeling annoyed at the end.

[Nonny]

Oh, and another thing. How did Patrick end up with the bracelet? If Nel was wearing it when Sean accidentally pushed her in his PTSD flashback, and as Erin pointed out wasn't broken/damaged, it wasn't like he frantically tried to grab at her and it came off as she went over the cliff.

Did she take it off when they had one last boink session in the cabin before they went to recreate the night of Lauren's murder?

[mrspez07]

I’m going to answer before reading other replies.
I felt like I had to slog through this book. The character narration seemed to jump a little too much. I’m no stranger to books with moving narrators, but this one had too many and changed too often.

I felt there was little suspense in this book until the end, if the initial part storyline was intended to illicit a level of suspense it was lost on me. In some comparison to Girl on The Train, which I really liked, this one had no primary suspenseful event to draw you in the same way (even the one we read earlier this year with the HS girls, past disappearance had that initial hook). I did get into”page turner” mode later in the book as it was trying to be solved and the pieces fell into place, just not for most of the book.
I feel like the character development was a little weak, but again, maybe because of so many POV. I considered this overall a middle of the road filler kind of book and gave it 3 stars.

[smock]

It was also hard for me to get invested in the story. I didn't care much for the "secret allure of the water" angle. I wanted more on the personal relationships, and fewer narrators! I agree that cutting down the POVs and completely cutting the witch stuff would have upped the suspense and made it a much smoother read. That being said, I did enjoy a number of the twists and turns, and I liked the development of Jules and Lena.

[pandora89]

It's been a few months since I read this book so I don't remember all the details but I definitely agree with everyone else. I wasn't a huge fan of this book, it was okay, but Girl on the Train was much better.