This story follows social worker Jax as she returns to her grandmother's estate after her sister, Lexie, is found dead - drowned in the pool in the backyard. When she arrives at the house, she discovers Lexie had been researching their family history and the history of the property. We also follow a second timeline starting in 1929 where Ethel and her husband visit a newly built hotel and on the hotel grounds is a natural spring rumored to grant wishes. The two timelines intertwine as Jax and Ethel come to find that the truth behind the mysterious properties of the spring may be darker than they could ever imagine.
(TW/CW: self harm, mental illness)
My absolute favorite thing about this story was the tone. This had an overall creepy vibe, but I never found it to be horror or even very thriller-y (although some other reviews I've read disagree with me on that point). The main plot revolved around Jax dealing with the grief of losing her sister as well as the guilt of how distant she'd been from her family over the past few years. The house is full of memories - good and bad - with further prod Jax's feelings on these issues. It really felt similar to Stephen King's Pet Sematary with the overall exploration of grief that was very grounded in reality but with a strange supernatural element on the fringe that amps up the creep factor. As the story progresses, the tone gets darker and more sinister as we find out more truths behind what, exactly, is going on with this spring. In the past POV of Ethel, we get this same tone which enhances the idea of how this house and spring is connected through these different generations and how entwined people's lives can be. I also liked how the tone of the story contrasts with the theme of wish fulfillment which most people would think of as a really happy thing but we consistently see these characters technically get their wishes but at a great cost that they weren't expecting.
I thought the characterization and character relationships were really well done. We are introduced to a number of characters pretty quickly as Jax comes back into this small town for the first time in a while. However, we quickly establish relationships as well as individual tension points between the characters which helps immediately immerse the reader into this world. Then, the longer we stay in this small town, the more layered the connections get. I would characterize this book as being character driven and I wasn't necessarily expecting that based on the description. I was expecting a bit more of a supernatural thriller with a more direct threat to our protagonist. While there was a good part of the book that revolved around figuring out the mystery that Lexie supposedly found answers to, I feel like the story kept coming back to the tension between characters. I did enjoy the way all the characters were connected - it felt very realistic for small town nosiness. I also liked how Jax viewed her relationships through two different lenses - her emotions and her social worker side. It was an interesting way for the reader to see how these relationships were unsettling her and how she would talk to herself to remind herself to keep calm or to drop a subject that was obviously upsetting someone. When they were younger, Lexie was formally diagnosed with "schizoaffective disorder of the bipolar type" which would cause her to have extreme bouts of mania sometimes accompanied with hallucinations. A big part of Jax coming back into this house and going through Lexie's research was figuring out if what she was seeing was real or if it was just her disorder as well as Jax pushing through her own personal judgements of her sister and her illness to find the truth.
My main negative point for the book was that there was one loose thread that I felt never got tied up in the end (or maybe it did and I just didn't quite understand what was going on). This thread is was one of Jax's patients - a young boy - who started having dreams about fish who turned into monsters right before Lexie died. He then starts having what Jax's co-worker described as a full psychotic break while Jax is away at the house. While Jax is dealing with her sister's funeral and all the other weird stuff happening, she keeps forgetting about him (and so did I, to be honest). She would suddenly remember and then try to call his house only for it to go to voicemail. He comes back up toward the end where Jax is talking to him on the phone but then her aunt listens on the line and says no one was on the phone with her. And that was the last we see of the boy. I was never quite clear on if he was connected to the spring in someway or if he was having these nightmares because he was close to Jax or what, exactly, was going on. There were other mysterious phone calls that occur throughout the story so maybe it wasn't really the boy calling and then it was just a coincidence that he had nightmares about fish monsters before Jax left? Everything else gets tied up so nicely that I was a bit confused about the boy's thread feeling so unfinished.
Split timelines are usually a win, but this one didn't hit 100% home for me. Overall, I think it was necessary and I really enjoyed getting to read the 'real time' events that Jax finds out about in the future. I also think the past timeline does a good job setting the tone specifically when it comes to the spring and how the sort of lore around it began. However, I did find myself not really caring about Ethel and her problems. She always came across as detached from the rest of the story which tracks considering she does self harm to ground herself when her emotions get out of control. She then would remind herself who she is, where she is, and what she's doing at that moment. So in that way, I can appreciate her characterization but some of her chapters weren't as exciting as I think they could have been if she was a more active character. I did like how much longer the past timeline was (decades) compared to the current day timeline (a weekish) because we got to see so much of the set up behind the house where Jax was staying in the current day. I think being able to see the progression does make the reveals later in the book hit a little harder and makes the accusations Jax makes more believable because the reader has all this emotional backstory to back Jax up. However, having that many years scrunched into half of the book again made things feel a little more surface level than I would have liked.
The ending was bittersweet, but I overall thought it was the most appropriate ending there could have been. I appreciated how we got a definite answer to if the supernatural element was read or imagined which I wasn't exactly expecting. I would have expected a book like this where the supernatural elements were almost pushed to the side to have a more ambiguous ending in that regard. I had to re-read the first few pages of the last chapter because I wasn't sure exactly what happened but once I caught on, I was pleasantly surprised. It had a similar structure of an ending to a book I read last year which was the first time I'd come across that particular style of ending and I think I really enjoy that technique in these 2 books. I found that the plot threads were tied up by the end (the above example as an exception) so the reader did get closure on a number of side plots as well as answers to the main mystery.
Overall, a very atmospheric and creepy book that explores themes of grief, guilt, and how wishes sometimes aren't better if they come true. I'd also like to note for any fellow Vermonters (or New Englanders in general) that this book has some fantastic little gems that I think readers from other areas of the country might just skim right over.
336 pages.
Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the ARC.
Expected Publication Date: April 6, 2021.
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