My review of Still Water will follow the publisher’s blurb :
HOW DO YOU FIND THE TRUTH IN A TOWN FULL OF SECRETS?
Clare has to find them.
Sally Proulx and her young boy have mysteriously disappeared in the stormy town of High River. Clare is hired to track them down, hoping against all odds to find them alive. But High River isn’t your typical town. It’s a place where women run to—women who want to escape their past. They run to Helen Haines, a matriarch who offers them safe haven and anonymity. Pretending to be Sally’s long-lost friend, Clare turns up and starts asking questions, but nothing prepares her for the swirl of deception and the depth of the lies.
Did Sally drown? Did her son? Was it an accident, or is their disappearance part of something bigger?
In a town where secrets are crucial to survival, everyone is hiding something. Detectives Somers and Rourke clearly have an ulterior motive beyond solving the case. Malcolm Boon, who hired Clare, knows more about her than he reveals. And Helen is concealing a tragic family history of her own. As the truth surges through High River, Clare must face the very thing she has so desperately been running from, even if it comes at a devastating cost. Compulsively gripping and twisty, Still Water is a deep dive of a thriller that will leave you breathless.
If you loved Still Mine, you’ll definitely be turning pages with Still Water. I could not put this down, I repeat… I could not put this down. I’ve been anxiously waiting the sequel to Still Mine since I finished its last page and gave it a preferred spot on my book shelf. You can read my review of the first book in the Still series HERE.
I love Amy Stuart’s writing. I can’t put my finger on why exactly but perhaps it is the fluidity and the flow that make her books so enjoyable to read. Still Water has many twists and turns, great backstories and tackles some serious subject matter along the way.
Now, let’s to those twists ! Throughout the book, I was constantly trying to figure out what exactly happened, who was involved and why. Since pretty much all the characters are unreliable, it was frustrating (in a good way) to try and solve this before it ended. I’m not going to give anything away but do expect some unexpected. And for me, the unexpected came in the way one mystery was solved and another one begins.
Stuart is a queen of backstories. She really gave every character something I could hang on to. Even if I didn’t identify with some of them, at least I could understand where they were coming from.
Abuse does not go unnoticed in Still Water. It’s not done lightly either – abuse of power, mental, physical – Amy Stuart tackles the subtleties. I enjoyed the parts where her characters talk about how they remember things and the fragility of those memories. How each person involved has their own interpretation of events; their own truth. Actually, truth and lies have a major role in this book. Stuart explores the gamut; the untold truth, the half-truth, the white lie…. We wade through it all in Still Water. Did you see what I did there 😉
Ultimately I felt that Still Water was setting the stage for something more. There is a shift towards the end of the novel where the focus swings to Malcom and Clare. The ending is definitely where fresh pieces are put on the board, setting the stage perfectly for book three. I can’t wait !!
Still Water by Amy Stuart available May 8th 2018
Published by Simon & Schuster
336 pages
ISBN 9781476790459 | May 2018
An e-galley of Still Water was provided by the publisher in exchange for my thoughts and review.