Have you ever experienced fate with a book?
Fate intervened to put Cat Steadman’s work in my hands at the right moment. Why hadn’t I read SOMETHING IN THE WATER before? It was published in 2017, not so old to be classic or vintage, but also not new. Nor can I claim it was obscure, since it was an early Reese Book Club selection. All I can say is it was fate that someone recommended this book to me after reading an excerpt of my current work-in-progress. And now that I’ve finished, I want to build a statue in honor of that person. What high praise!
NO SPOILERS in this review.
Another twist of fate: because it was personally recommended to me I bought it without reading the book jacket copy. Have you ever done this? It can be a real game changer. The first time I got lucky in this way was with the Secret Life of AJ Fikry. I was so glad I didn’t read the back cover before I finished that delightful book. Marketing people care more about you buying the book than enjoying the book and sometimes, though not often, this interferes with the reading experience.
The first 100 pages of Cat Steadman’s debut explores a relationship slowly breaking under the stress of life, while also building towards this same couple’s wedding. I had no idea what was coming at that point. I didn’t even realize that they would literally see “something in the water”, let alone have any indication of the havoc it would wreak on their relationship. The last 240 pages dovetail the relationship troubles with the “something in the water incident.”
Here’s what works: the pacing. I could NOT put this book down. I walked around with it. I stayed up too late and woke up too early with it. I found myself saying things like “I probably have time for one page right now” twenty times a day.
Here’s what also works: the contortion of the unreliable narrator device. This book is written in very very close first person. We are thinking with — and as — Erin, the wife. She is confused at times, about what she should do, about who is on her side, about who she needs to fear. And as a result we feel confused, but our reading brain alerts us that we’ve seen this before. There’s a little twinge that says, hey, brain, maybe ERIN is the one we shouldn’t be trusting with this account of things. Erin proves to be unreliable only in the way all humans are, she misses cues and puts on blinders, but she’s never fooling the reader, even when we feel like she might be intentionally leading us astray. The result is a captivating story that keeps the psychological thriller reader on her toes.
Here’s what doesn’t work: that phrase might be a stretch. The whole book works. BUT I really struggled with the last quarter section before the ending (it resolves well). This is the period in most books when things go over-the-top. People are murdered by the numbers, or in wild ways, or all hell breaks loose. Writers and editors call this raising the stakes. If you’ve been raising the stakes throughout the book, by the time you get towards the ending things should be at preposterous levels. You need that in order to force resolution. It can often be the most eye-rolling part of a novel, but subconsciously it might be necessary, or at least it’s expected in certain genres. Cat Steadman keeps it cool though. There’s a final confrontation that does get a little wild, but maybe it’s not wild enough. Or maybe it’s undercut by the opening scene where we know she’s burying a body.
Here’s what also works: exactly what I said didn’t work above. Honestly, it’s hard to say. After all, I’m still thinking about this book. It was exceptional. Maybe that’s the best thing to aim for?
DON’T skip it: if you’ve heard comparisons with Gone Girl and you hated Aimee Dunne. Erin isn’t Aimee at all. In some moments she feels like it, but she’s not.
DO skip it: if you aren’t interested in the slow descent of relationships, and the question, when DID we start to go bad?
BONUS: Something In The Water was written by the prolific working British actress, Catherine Steadman, most famous in the US for her role as Mabel Lane Fox on Downton Abbey. Cat recently released her third novel, THE DISAPPEARING ACT. I already bought it and have it sitting near the top of my TBR pile!
This is a “highly recommend” from me. The concept and the execution are incredibly strong.