Following up on the phenomenal success of her debut hit thriller, The Girl On The Train, Paula Hawkins is about to return for more dark ruminations with the hardback release of Into The Water. It’s only be a short 2-years between books, so it’ll be interesting to see if she’s had enough time to make it as much of a bestseller, but with the psychological thriller intensity of her previous title, it’s got to be a good shout to be one of the must-read books of 2017.
Set for release on hardback, ebook and audiobook on the 2nd May 2017, we’ll be surprised if it doesn’t go on to top the bestseller list in the very least. The fact that The Girl On The Train movie adaptation was released on the big screen towards the end of 2016 adds to Paula’s growing profile and when you take into account the fact that it will be out on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on the 6th February 2017, it starts to look like it’s timed to perfection.
The plot for Into The Water sees Paula shifting away from the hubbub of the big city and suburban sprawl of London to the relative quiet seclusion of family life in a small riverside farm. As you’d expect from a psychological thriller, this is far from happy families and the little unit is swimming in its own wash of lies, but as secrets start to surface the waters only get bleaker.
Suspense piles on top of it with a story that promises as much menace as it does family ties. At the heart of it all are two sisters, but there’s sure to be a lot of detective work for the reader to begin to piece the submerged truth together.
It’s a story that appears to dive into the concept of our understanding of events in the past and how the truth can be obfuscated and even manipulated entirely to present a very different take on history. It’s a popular theme in literature, with more than a few books in recent years featuring families and their secrets scratching at the surface, but for us they’ve always been deeper socio-political commentaries on much more than just the family nest and the confusion or machinations that run through it.
If Into The Water doesn’t also go on to get a movie adaptation, we’ll be pretty surprised, but a lot still rides on the success of the hardback release. Coming out at the start of summer 2017 should put it on a lot of holiday reading lists, including ours, and hopefully it’ll lead on to many more great thrillers from Paul Hawkins in the years to come. You can follow the author on Twitter or Facebook to keep up-to-date on further development.
For anyone that wants to get a taster of what the book has in store, publisher Penguin will be sending out the first chapter of Into The Water as a sampler for anyone that subscribes to Paula’s newsletter. Visit https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/competitions/2016/apr/first-chapter-of-the-new-paula-hawkins-novel/ to get in on the action for yourself.
