"This magnificent thriller sees the mystery around a mother’s drowning in a Gower estuary resurface in the wake of a new vanishing."
Suspenseful and suffused in the uncanny power of the ever-shifting tides of a Welsh estuary, Carys Shannon’s Truth Like Water is a first-rate mystery novel. Rippling with the dark revelations of a rural village and the family secrets of a young woman who’s all but lost to grief and the agony of not knowing the truth, it’s a sublimely-written work.
Three years have passed since Catrin’s mother drowned in the estuary close to their home: “She looked mythical, lying like a mermaid in the shallow estuary water, her skin the lightest shade of blue, an ebbing tide pulling at her dark curls”. But Catrin doesn’t believe it was an accident — her mother “knew the tides and would never have risked getting caught out”.
When a teenage girl goes missing on the same mudflats and Catrin informs the police, both police and villagers close rank, brushing it off as a result of the girl having run away in the past. Consumed by finding the girl, Catrin unearths a succession of dark secrets in an exquisitely-paced mystery that’s menacing, moving and consummately gripping.
| Primary Genre | Thriller and Suspense |
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This is a story of lost women – some who can be found again, and some who can't.
The debut novel from an award-winning short story writer. It was awarded a Literature Wales development grant and earlier versions have been longlisted for the Bath and Mslexia Novel Awards and shortlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award. In 2020 it won the Jericho Writers Festival of Writing Prize.
In a small estuary village on the Welsh coast, Catrin is mourning the anniversary of her mother's drowning when a teenage girl disappears on the same mudflats. Terrified of history repeating itself and driven by unresolved grief, Catrin becomes obsessed with finding Emily. Her search dredges up dark revelations from the village’s past and present, uncovering secrets about Catrin's own family. Secrets that her parents had never wanted her to discover.
Truth Like Water is the lyrical, gripping debut novel from an award-winning writer.
Truth Like Water features in the following genres: Debut Books of the Month, Debuts, Star Books, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, Fiction
Truth Like Water is available in Paperback
Truth Like Water was written by Carys Shannon and published by Parthian
Truth Like Water has 318 pages
£10.80
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