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Creepy, mind-blowing and terrifying, this is not your average horror novel.

Far, far from it.

Oceans, in fact, away from anything resembling the boundaries of the world we know.

Buckle up, as between these pages, we will meet Glen, our third-person-POV narrator, a high school biology teacher who embarks on a road trip through the Appalachians with his fourteen year old daughter, Lauren, in a heart-tugging attempt to re-bond and claim a lost connection. They are battling more than Lauren’s adolescent angst, as both Glen and his daughter have clearly been through some sort of trauma, the effects of which are underpinning both of them.

Without giving the plot away, (you must read this one!) it’s not long before Glen and Lauren’s innocuous-appearing trip leads them straight into horror — horror in the form of a living, growing body of water, complete with hair-raising and grievous intent, from which they find themselves holed up, trapped, in a remote mountain side diner, prisoners seeking sanctuary, along with several other shell-shocked victims.

Glen and Lauren’s epic struggle with the “personified” living water, along with our gradual understanding of their past trauma, and how it will all resolve, is the underlying subject matter of this book, which, for this reader at least, features one of the most inventive, sinister and compelling evil creatures ever encountered. And an ending that encapsulates it all — grief, horror, hope, and redemption, so neatly it may actually call for a second reading.

A terrific read, — and a crazy one, that will have you scratching your head in wonder, and trembling more than a little in your boots, the next time you encounter a stubbornly dripping tap or beckoning, filled-to-the-rim bathtub.

Read it.

A great big thank you to @Netgalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts provided are my own.