Title: Sweet Water
Author: Cara Reinard
Genre: women crime fiction, domestic thriller, women psychological fiction
PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt: A book featuring three generations (grandparents, parents, child)
Thank you Netgalley for this book.
Somehow this book ended up on my TBR list. I can’t remember where I first heard about it, though. In any case, when I saw it available on NetGalley, I gladly requested it. Any books that I can knock off my TBR, I’m excited to find. Sadly, this one didn’t live up to my expectations.
From Goodreads: It’s what Sarah Ellsworth dreamed of. Marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Martin. Living in a historic mansion in Pennsylvania’s most exclusive borough. And Finn, a teenage son with so much promise. Until…A call for help in the middle of the night leads Sarah and Martin to the woods, where they find Finn, injured, dazed, and weeping near his girlfriend’s dead body. Convinced he’s innocent, Sarah and Martin agree to protect their son at any cost and not report the crime.
But there are things Sarah finds hard to reconcile: a cover-up by Martin’s family that’s so unnervingly cold-blooded. Finn’s lies to the authorities are too comfortable, too proficient, not to arouse her suspicions. Even the secrets of the old house she lives in seem to be connected to the incident. As each troubling event unfolds, Sarah must decide how far she’ll go to save her perfect life.
Plot holes abound in this one. The Ellsworth family truly is the worst, and the fact that Sarah didn’t see through it was absurd. The hints as to who really did the crime were so obvious. I saw the ending coming a mile away. As a book editor, I just don’t see how a book goes through the entire editing and publishing process and ends up so riddled with issues. Plot and character believability should never been in question. Unfortunately, this book had both issues.
Pleasant Nights 