After zipping through The Woman in the Window audiobook, I started The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh. It got a place on my 2019 book list because it has 3.5 starts on Amazon, 3.52 on goodreads and is longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. So, once again I went in without reading the description thinking it’s going to be a good one…
The Water Cure: Amazon Description
King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire, he has anchored the buoys in the water, he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.
But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day two men and a boy wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?
My Review
The Water Cure has the creepiness of Handmaid’s Tale, the cult-like females of The Girls, the strength of the women of The Power, and the gripping moments of Gone Girl. It’s one of those books that you do and do not want to keep reading. It was eerie and disturbing. I went between feeling bad for the sisters to thinking they were evil. So, if that’s your thing, read on sister!
Side Note: I don’t typically like to listen to audiobooks that fast, but the library audiobooks are a two week loan. In addition, the two weeks starts as soon as the audiobook is available and automatically “returns” at the end of the two weeks. Consequently, when a book I have had in my queue comes in I have to pop my headphones in and listen to it as fast as I can.
