G. Robert Frazier

Part of the fun of reading a book like Ali Land’s Good Me Bad Me is the anticipation of what’s to come. You know from the get-go that you’re going to be in for a few shocks—you just aren’t sure how you’ll get there. Fortunately, Land delivers on all accounts.

The concept provides an instant hook: The 15-year-old daughter of a serial killer turns in her mother and, while waiting to testify, worries if she too is bad and will become a killer. You might think Annie, who is later renamed Milly by her foster family in order to protect her identity, would breathe easier after escaping her mother’s reign of terror. But her nightmare is just beginning.

In addition to the psychological ramifications of having lived with a serial murderer, Milly must adjust to life with a new family and new school environment. Neither is much of a comfort. Her foster family has its own dysfunctional relationships—an uneasy marriage and a spoiled 15-year-old daughter of their own, Phoebe—while school presents more than its share of challenges. Her foster dad, who doubles as her therapist, seems more interested in making notes for his book about Milly. And instead of embracing Milly with sympathy and care, Phoebe sees her as a rival for her parents’ attention and immediately subjects her to bullying and ridicule in front of their classmates.

As the title of the book implies, it’s only a matter of time before Milly’s darker tendencies get the better of her. Getting there is just half the fun.

A former child and adolescent mental health nurse, Land expertly captures the angst and trauma of teenage adolescence through Milly’s compelling narrative voice. The result is a starkly realized and haunting thriller.

Paula Hawkins follows her debut smash, The Girl on the Train, with the twisty and compulsive Into the Water. Told through multiple viewpoints, the story immerses the reader in a complex web of suspense, suspicion and emotional turmoil as her characters wrestle with the recent drowning of a single mother and a teenage girl, their bodies found weeks apart at the bottom of a river known as the Drowning Pool. Both deaths are initially treated as suicides, but doubts and secrets abound, prompting speculation of another cause entirely.

Unlike The Girl on the Train, which alternated narratives from two main characters and, later in the book, a third, Into the Water features more than a dozen storytellers, leaving readers hard-pressed to keep them all straight without a set of flash cards. None of the voices is exactly eager to divulge everything they know, leaving readers to piece together the overarching truth from each chapter. But the deeper readers proceed, the easier it is to be swept away by the assorted voices and the secrets they conceal. Hawkins skillfully delves into the psyche of each character, extracting their feelings, fears and fallacies, slowly ramping up the psychological suspense as she goes.

That said, it’s difficult to discern whose story this actually is. One could argue that the lead character is Jules Abbott, sister of Nel Abbott, who dies at the outset of the book. But you could also argue that Nel’s daughter, Lena, is the novel’s main protagonist. Hawkins keeps you guessing, and in doing so loses some of the emotional impact of creating a single character to root for and sympathize with.

Into the Water is ultimately a story of families mired in secrets and uneasy relationships, haunted by the past and fearful of facing the truth in the present. The book builds slowly, requiring patience above all from readers but with the promise of a more compelling latter half of the book.