Review: Still Water by Amy Stuart

From the Globe and Mail bestselling author of Still Mine comes a new thriller featuring Clare and Malcolm, this time on the hunt for a missing mother and son in a town that is drowning in deception—Clare may be in her gravest danger yet.

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.

Paperback, 326 pages

Published May 8th 2018 by Simon Schuster 

Series: Still #2

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Kristine's Thoughts:

** I received an advanced readers copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!**

Still Water is the second book in the Still series but I believe it was meant to be able to be read as a stand alone. However, I struggled a bit with the story because I did not read the first book in the series. I found the back story and the relationship between Clare and Malcolm Boon to be confusing and not very clear. Intentional perhaps? I'm not sure.

The story showed great potential at the beginning. Clare went undercover as a friend to discover what happened to Sally who went missing with her son from a refuge for troubled women. When Clare arrived in High River it just fell flat. I couldn't connect with any of the characters (including Clare) and I found myself not overly interested or caring about what happened to Sally. It was really disappointing. The mystery was even less exciting. Instead of Clare following clues and discovering things it seemed that people just ended up confessing their stories to her right up until the end. She really didn't solve anything and when everything was uncovered it was very anti climatic.

I feel like I may have enjoyed the book more if I read the first in the series. Perhaps I would have been able to connect to Clare better and maybe I would have been a little more interested in the outcome. Also, there may have been a little more clarity about the relationship between her and Malcolm Boon. Then again, the book left off with the hint of a third book that might give the clarity needed for that part of the story.

About the Author

Amy Stuart’s first novel, Still Mine, was an international bestseller. Its sequel, Still Water, will be released in 2018.

Amy's writing has previously appeared in Exile Quarterly, the Vanderbilt CVC Anthology, Freefall Magazine and the Globe and Mail. She won the 2011 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Fiction Competition and was a finalist for the 2012 Vanderbilt/Exile Award. In 2012, Amy completed her MFA in Creative Writing through UBC under the mentorship of writer Lisa Moore. When not writing, she is a guidance counsellor at an alternative high school.

Amy was born in Toronto where she still lives with her husband and their three sons. Aside from writing, she loves hockey. Ice hockey.

Connect with Amy

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