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celjla212's review against another edition
3.0
It takes a little while to get into the style of this novel; the story is oddly told in second person and in the present tense. While this is something rarely seen in a traditional novel, it makes for a different, and sometimes intense, reading experience. But once I was sucked in to the story, I couldn't put it down.
Most of the book takes place in or around a swimming pool. The main character, Annie, is the mother of two young girls who are competitive swimmers. The man who is the killer spends a lot of time at the pool too, watching the meets and practices and carefully choosing his next victim. While there's never any mystery as to who the killer is, that doesn't change the fact that the reader gets chills when getting into his mind and actually seeing him describe committing the murders.
For the most part, I think this book would have been better with the exclusion of several characters and subplots, but the addition of some others. As an example, we do not hear anything about a murdered girl's parents and their journey through grief, but you see a random swim dad's thoughts about how his boys are swimming in the practice. This dad never came up again in the rest of the novel, and the paragraphs from his point of view were apropos of nothing. In addition to the cheating subplot, which I felt didn't add much or develop the story, paragraphs full of swimming jargon and descriptions of nature gave the novel an overall bloated feeling.
Where this book did work was the way that the unique narration style allowed the reader to get into the heads of characters better. In addition to seeing Annie's neuroses, we see her feelings of rejection from her husband, guilt about how she sometimes treats her daughters, and desire when she's around the guy she is starting an affair with. Though Annie is the main character, we also see into the mind of the killer, and his matter of fact way of describing things is quite chilling.
As I said, this book is different from the start, and I can tell that it's one that won't appeal to all readers. If you can stick with it, I think you'll be happy with the ending, even though to me it was a bit anticlimactic. This writer has talent, for sure.
Most of the book takes place in or around a swimming pool. The main character, Annie, is the mother of two young girls who are competitive swimmers. The man who is the killer spends a lot of time at the pool too, watching the meets and practices and carefully choosing his next victim. While there's never any mystery as to who the killer is, that doesn't change the fact that the reader gets chills when getting into his mind and actually seeing him describe committing the murders.
For the most part, I think this book would have been better with the exclusion of several characters and subplots, but the addition of some others. As an example, we do not hear anything about a murdered girl's parents and their journey through grief, but you see a random swim dad's thoughts about how his boys are swimming in the practice. This dad never came up again in the rest of the novel, and the paragraphs from his point of view were apropos of nothing. In addition to the cheating subplot, which I felt didn't add much or develop the story, paragraphs full of swimming jargon and descriptions of nature gave the novel an overall bloated feeling.
Where this book did work was the way that the unique narration style allowed the reader to get into the heads of characters better. In addition to seeing Annie's neuroses, we see her feelings of rejection from her husband, guilt about how she sometimes treats her daughters, and desire when she's around the guy she is starting an affair with. Though Annie is the main character, we also see into the mind of the killer, and his matter of fact way of describing things is quite chilling.
As I said, this book is different from the start, and I can tell that it's one that won't appeal to all readers. If you can stick with it, I think you'll be happy with the ending, even though to me it was a bit anticlimactic. This writer has talent, for sure.
sjruskin's review against another edition
2.0
This is me telling you to not read this book. Never got past its style to engage with the characters.
abarkmeier's review against another edition
5.0
I was very skeptical of this book at first, but its methodical and wave-like movement of the ennui of parental life, paired with the deep emotional struggles and fears of these characters' situations, is effective and compelling. Once I was able to commit to the story, about a third of the way through, I couldn't put it down---which says a lot for me now when I have a very limited attention span!
machadofam8's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting - very fluid style, which definitely made me feel as though I was under water, swimming. Sometimes floating, sometimes churning up the lane.
modrallj's review against another edition
1.0
This is me regretting I chose to finish this book. This is me having wasted my time. This is me telling you not to bother reading this book. This is me telling you that in 340 pages pretty much nothing happens. This is me telling you the character development is shit.
pagesofpins's review against another edition
1.0
This book is more novel than horror (the violence of the killer makes up a very small portion of the book) or mystery (we are told right away who the killer is and who he will kill next). Unfortunately, the book did not live up to the reviews I read praising its creativity and suspense.
Things I Didn't Like:
1. The book could have gotten away with the unique second person narration style, phrasing almost every paragraph starting with "This is" as though showing you a movie, except that it tried to tell me who I am (You are Annie, you think this, you are doing this). This distracted me from the narrative and was noisome because I can't relate to Annie at all.
2. Much of this novel is unnecessary, stream-of-consciousness rambling about horribly boring, mundane things that repeat over and over. Worries about buying organic milk, the daughters' puberty, the shape of various objects and what that reminds "me" of. Over and over and over. I never want to hear about any of these things again.
3. Suspense? Where was that? In the midst of all the rambling, we are immediately told who the killer is, and we know chapters and chapters ahead of time who he will kill.
4. Almost all of the characters go beyond imperfect to insanely annoying. I was actually rooting for the killer to murder several of them.
5. A disgruntled elementary school secretary named Floyd who loves children? I think this killer was supposed to chill us with how normal and wholesome he should be but isn't, but instead he sounds like the punch line to a joke.
6. Why would he let someone who can identify him go? That's so sloppy. Worst killer ever.
7. ANNIE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET YOUR S#*& together already! Take the killer down! Quit daydreaming through life! Talk to your stupid husband! Stop fantasizing about other people's husbands! And who starts chatting with a friend about how you're sure the poor thing isn't really being cheated on, and then immediately heads over to that friends spouse AND CHEATS WITH HIM?
8. Dinah has a bit of character development toward the end, but I'm not sure what suddenly triggered this when nothing else made her less obnoxious before. Her divorce from her perfectly reasonable but deaf husband? Losing weight? I got nothin'.
Things I Didn't Like:
1. The book could have gotten away with the unique second person narration style, phrasing almost every paragraph starting with "This is" as though showing you a movie, except that it tried to tell me who I am (You are Annie, you think this, you are doing this). This distracted me from the narrative and was noisome because I can't relate to Annie at all.
2. Much of this novel is unnecessary, stream-of-consciousness rambling about horribly boring, mundane things that repeat over and over. Worries about buying organic milk, the daughters' puberty, the shape of various objects and what that reminds "me" of. Over and over and over. I never want to hear about any of these things again.
3. Suspense? Where was that? In the midst of all the rambling, we are immediately told who the killer is, and we know chapters and chapters ahead of time who he will kill.
4. Almost all of the characters go beyond imperfect to insanely annoying. I was actually rooting for the killer to murder several of them.
5. A disgruntled elementary school secretary named Floyd who loves children? I think this killer was supposed to chill us with how normal and wholesome he should be but isn't, but instead he sounds like the punch line to a joke.
6. Why would he let someone who can identify him go? That's so sloppy. Worst killer ever.
7. ANNIE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET YOUR S#*& together already! Take the killer down! Quit daydreaming through life! Talk to your stupid husband! Stop fantasizing about other people's husbands! And who starts chatting with a friend about how you're sure the poor thing isn't really being cheated on, and then immediately heads over to that friends spouse AND CHEATS WITH HIM?
8. Dinah has a bit of character development toward the end, but I'm not sure what suddenly triggered this when nothing else made her less obnoxious before. Her divorce from her perfectly reasonable but deaf husband? Losing weight? I got nothin'.
sde's review against another edition
3.0
This story was decent but I found the writing style to be annoying. Half the paragraphs start with "This is. . ." which reminded me of the nursery rhyme "This is the House that Jack Built." or the old This is your brain on drugs ad that showed an egg frying in a pan.
I also took a little while for things to happen, and there were a few threads - Beatrice, one of the women's babysitter when she was a girl; Mandy, the custodian at the pool - that I thought would go somewhere, but didn't. I really wanted to get to know Chris, a beautiful but distant and isolated mother of one of the swimmers, better. But there was enough suspense to keep me reading.
I also took a little while for things to happen, and there were a few threads - Beatrice, one of the women's babysitter when she was a girl; Mandy, the custodian at the pool - that I thought would go somewhere, but didn't. I really wanted to get to know Chris, a beautiful but distant and isolated mother of one of the swimmers, better. But there was enough suspense to keep me reading.
cook_memorial_public_library's review against another edition
4.0
Recommended by Becky.
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Sthis%20is%20the%20water%20murphy__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=pearl
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Sthis%20is%20the%20water%20murphy__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=pearl
shalanna's review against another edition
2.0
This is me being annoyed by the author's writing style. This is me hoping the this is me sentences would end. This is me realizing they don't. This is me hating this book, which had a ton of potential, because of it. Good story, just couldn't get past the absurd writing.
lauraa06's review against another edition
3.0
This is written in the second person which takes a while to settle in to ("You walk into the locker room. You see your daughter.") The book went from a simple story about a disillusioned wife and mother to a murder mystery. I did not like the ending however.