The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding is truly unputdownable and one of my top 3 books read this year! Put this on top of your to be read pile now, trust me! Lee Gulliver owned a restaurant in New York and it was doing well. She had investors to help her open it and one in particular was a bit shady. None of that mattered because the restaurant was open and gaining popularity each week. No one could've seen the pandemic coming and the impact it would have on many businesses, especially restaurants. Lee lost everything and had to leave town as her investors weren't happy that their investment had gone dry.

Lee headed to Seattle in an old banged up Toyota and she had everything she owned inside the car. She was now estranged from her sister as she blamed her for her boyfriend's indiscretions. Lee wanted to put distance between her life in New York and Seattle. She didn't want to be tracked down by that one dangerous investor. Lee never thought she would end up living in her car, but she had next to no money. She slept in her car and kept a knife by her side while she slept. One night Lee is sleeping in a parking lot and 2 men approach her car and bang on her windows. They're junkies looking for money for their next fix. One of them breaks the passenger window and grabs Lee's bag, but then he reaches in and grabs her purse on the floor. As they wrestle for it, he is too strong and he gets away with Lee's wallet, ID's, and the little money she had.

Lee has a job working the late shift at a diner. The owner pays her in cash and Lee likes it that way. She gets a meal at the end of her shift which is also helpful. Lee is scared because she's not safe in a car with a broken window. She must wait until pay day to get enough money to get it fixed. Lee decides to drive further north to sleep where it's more upscale and the beach is close by. As she's sleeping Lee is awakened by a noise. It sounds like someone crying. As Lee gets out of her car and heads towards the beach path she sees a woman going into the water in her clothes. Lee watches her as she goes further and further and eventually she goes underwater. When she doesn't come back up, Lee rushes into the water to pull her out. Lee dives under where she saw the woman go under but she's not there. As she continues to swim and dive she finds her and pulls her up and gets her out of the water. The water was so cold that both women are freezing.

When the woman comes to she is angry that Lee saved her. She tells Lee she's in a terrible marriage where her husband abuses her and treats her like a slave. He's a well known criminal defense lawyer so no one would believe her. He made her sign a contract agreeing to be his slave and she must follow the rules or be punished. The woman's name is Hazel and she lives in a huge house up on the cliff overlooking the beach. Lee thinks her life can't be that bad because at least she has a bed to sleep in, food to eat, and the safety of a house. It turns out Hazel also gets beaten by her husband if she doesn't follow his rules. She can only leave the house to go for a morning jog, to go to the gym for 2 hours, and to the grocery store. The main reason Hazel agreed to marry him was so that her mother with dementia would be well cared for in a good nursing home.

As Hazel and Lee see each other most mornings they start to become friends. Lee comes back to this parking area to sleep because no one else is here and she feels safe. Even after her window is fixed, it's a hard spot to pass up. Lee meets a man while working at the diner. She's instantly attracted to him and he to her. Lee looks forward to him coming in. As she chats with him she finds out his name is Jesse and that he's a trainer at the gym. They agree to go out for a drink after Lee's shift one night. Things go well, but Lee is sick from being in the cold water to rescue Hazel. Hazel brought her cold medicine and chicken soup, but she's not a lot better when she and Jesse go for drinks. Jesse brings Lee home and she's so groggy from the alcohol and cold meds he puts her in his bed and he sleeps on the sofa. Is Jesse really this nice or does he want something?

When Hazel sees Lee a couple days later she tells her that she has to leave her husband as it's getting worse. She shows Lee the bruises on her back. She tells Lee that she has a friend who can get her a fake ID and passport and she offers to do the same for Lee. Is Hazel a real friend or does she want something from Lee? As things escalate, Lee doesn't know who to trust and Hazel seems to be in danger. Why has Jesse changed so much? What's he up to? Is Hazel's husband really as bad as she says? Things get out of control and Lee has to make some hard decisions. Why does Hazel's husband know so much about her? Will their plan work? Will Hazel and Lee find a way to be safe? You'll have to read The Drowning Woman to find out the answers! I read this book in one day and enjoyed every minute! I rate The Drowning Woman 5 stars and give it my highest recommendation. It is one of the best thrillers I've read this year so don't hesitate to read it! I'd like to thank NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for an advanced copy of The Drowning Woman in exchange for a fair review. #TheDrowningWoman

Very slow start but it picked up towards the middle. Told from dual characters - an abused wife and the homeless woman she befriends. The author threw in some twists and turns for good measure.

𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰🌊
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚛𝚘𝚠𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚆𝚘𝚖𝚊𝚗 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

𝙂𝙚𝙣𝙧𝙚 🎭: thriller
𝙋𝙖𝙘𝙚 🏃🏼‍♀️: moderate/fast
𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙞𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 🖤: twists throughout the story
𝙏𝙒/𝘾𝙒 ⚠️: some discussion of unaliving

This fun thriller was extra twisty throughout the whole book rather than one banger at the end- which made for a super exciting read. I binged in two sittings and never found myself bored.

While I could see some of the plot twists coming, I was definitely surprised for the most part, and the twists just kept coming. So even when I found certain things predictable, I was still thrown off and shocked with other twists.

Some of the characters’ backstories could have used a little more detail/explanation but it didn’t hurt the story.

Epilogue was so goooooood. It’s really the perfect edge of your seat thriller, especially for readers who enjoy second guessing everything.

This is one book that you should not judge by the cover or title. The main characters in the book had very different perspectives but both women were in need of help. There were many twists and turns in the book. I finished this book on an airplane and couldn't get over the ending enough to begin a new book. I really enjoyed The Drowning Woman.

Before the pandemic Lee had owned her own restaurant but she had been unable to recover her business when the world began to return to some sort of normalcy. After alienating her family and borrowing money from a mobster that she couldn’t repay, Lee ran as far away as she could and found herself in Oregon. Now she’s homeless and living in her car. Early one morning she observes a woman walk into the ocean and disappear from view. Lee pulls her from the water and the two women begin to form a friendship of sorts. Lee soon discovers that her new friend has an abusive husband and would do just about anything to escape her marriage.

The Drowning Woman has a good premise, several twists, and is told from both Harper and Lee’s points of view. Lee and Harper are strong women and the premise of the story is interesting. However, there seems to be an excess of coincidences and moreover, both Lee and Harper make many poor and confusing choices that aren’t very believable. I found myself struggling through the latter half of the book.

Nevertheless, The Drowning Woman is entertaining if you are willing to overlook some of the things that aren’t very realistic or out of character. 3.5 stars. NetGalley provided an advance copy.

This was so twisted and unputdownable !

Lee is now homeless after her business closed because of covid. She’s estranged from her sister and living in her car.

Lees life continues to fall apart until she meets Hazel who’s escaping a life that seems perfect to Lee. Their friendship is immediately built off of lies and deception. Who can Lee trust? There are so many twists and unexpected turns, you can’t help but get wrapped up in this psychological thriller.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book just wasn’t for me. I felt like the pacing was a little too slow and I never found myself eager to pick the book back up. It wasn’t the writing that I didn’t care for but the development of the story.

The Drowning Woman
Author: Robyn Harding

Told in dual POV, this psychological thriller had plot twist on plot twist on plot twist. I could NOT put it down. I love not knowing where a book is going and I thought I knew but really I was out on the dirt road with no service and my gps was blinking no signal found. Add this one to your tbr TODAY.  
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you Robyn Harding, Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for my gifted copy.

The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding
@RHardingWriter
Pub date: June 13, 2023
5 stars

Robyn Harding is one of my favorites. There’s nothing she’s written that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. I just vibe with her writing style. The Drowning Woman, as one of my most anticipated novels this year, was everything I hoped it would be.

When the pandemic hits, Lee’s restaurant fails. This puts her in debt with a really bad man and leads her to some deeds that puts her on the outs with her family/friends. Leaving her life behind and going on the run, she finds herself on the streets of Seattle, moving her car from place to place, always seeking a safe spot but finding none. Then, one chilly morning, she see’s a distraught woman enter the ocean. Lee knows this woman intends to drown herself and pulls her out. Met with anger instead of gratitude, Lee realizes that the woman, Hazel, is trapped in a terrible abusive relationship. Forming a friendship, they agree to help each other out.

And this, my friends, is the start to a hell of a suspenseful thriller. Tense and action packed, quite literally a page turner, with the twistiest of twisty plots, this is one that every fan of the genre should read.

That’s enough. Go. Now. Read this!

Huge thanks to my friends over at @GrandCentralPub for this gifted copy!

#TheDrowningWoman #RobynHarding #ThrillerBooks #Suspense #FavoriteAuthors #BookstaLife #ReaderOfTheWrittenWord #GoingThroughSomeShit #June2023Releases #YouShouldReadThis

Published by Grand Central Publishing on June 13, 2023

Lee is homeless but she has romance on her mind when she meets a hunky guy who doesn’t immediately try to take advantage of her. Maybe focus on finding a place to live before you start dreaming about wedding bells but hey, that’s just me.

Lee owned a New York restaurant that was starting to be trendy before the pandemic shut it down. She couldn’t pay her bills so her gangster investor (strike 1) broke her finger and threatened to break the rest if he didn’t get his money back. She tried to blackmail her sister’s fiancé (strike 2) but only made an enemy out of her sister. To keep her fingers intact, she fled to the Pacific Northwest and is living in her car, working off the books as a waitress at a diner. The plot to this point is trite but just barely plausible. Unfortunately, plausible plotting is soon abandoned.

Lee is parked by the ocean when she sees a fully dressed woman walk into the water. Hazel is trying to drown herself as an alternative to living with an abusive husband. Lee rescues her. Hazel started out in a consensual dominant/submissive relationship (she envisioned a 50 Shades of Gray thing) with Benjamin, then moved to a consensual master/slave relationship (complete with a Total Power Exchange contract that no American court would enforce), but her consent and the limits she set eventually became unimportant. Hazel is a gold digger so, apart from sympathy for the abuse she endured, I found it difficult to care about her as a character.

After the rescue, Hazel asks Lee to teach her how to disappear from a threatening environment. Yet Lee fled impulsively, with no plan at all, and managed to get robbed when she parked in a bad neighborhood. She’s living in a car. Would Lee seriously believe that Hazel wants to emulate her?

A hot personal trainer named Jesse comes into the diner where Lee is working and asks her to have a drink with him. Lee seduces him on their third date and is thrilled to feel “seen” again, particularly after Hazel snubs her in public. She’s also thrilled to use Jesse’s shower and sleep in a real bed. After a good shag, she feels that she is “more than my mistakes.” It will be obvious to everyone but Lee that her self-congratulation is premature.

Hazel comes up with a sketchy plan to switch places with Lee (they miraculously look like twins after Lee gets her hair done) for a couple of hours, long enough for Hazel to thwart her husband’s surveillance and hop on a plane. I suspect that most readers will immediately think that entering Hazel’s home while pretending to be Hazel is both dangerous and stupid and that Hazel is playing Lee, but Hazel offers Lee a nice chunk of money to do it.

Both Hazel and Jesse send up a series of red flags but Lee is apparently too trusting to notice Hazel’s and too love struck to recognize Jesse’s. Lee sees the world from a naïve perspective that doesn’t match up with a homeless woman who fled from a gangster and encountered nothing but trouble thereafter. She eventually feels betrayed by two people she believed were “honest and decent.” I get it, but she only recently met both these people and had to ignore multiple warning signs to conclude that they were on her side. I find it hard to care about a character who is so remarkably dim.

I was prepared to write off The Drowning Woman as a waste of time until, soon after Lee enters Hazel’s home, the plot turns in a surprising direction. Unfortunately, Robyn Harding immediately kills the momentum by changing the point of view from Lee to Hazel and filling in Hazel’s backstory. Hazel, like Lee, fell head-over-heels in love, not with one man but with two. The women in this book think like characters in romance novels. Because they do not behave rationally, needless trouble ensues for everyone.

Hazel’s rewriting of Lee’s story from Hazel’s perspective brings us back to the surprising moment, which is no longer a surprise but is not yet explained. Point of view then shifts back to Lee, who would run like a rabbit if she had any sense, but that wouldn’t be much of a story. Lee decides to investigate a death for which she might be blamed, then discovers another fact (one unknown to Hazel) that places all the past events in another new light. Lee’s section ends with her discovery of yet another secret, but she doesn’t reveal it — even though she’s narrating events in the first person — because Harding wants to save it to set up the ending. Harding defeats the trust a first-person narrator should build with a reader by having her narrator describe her actions in real time while withholding her most important discovery at the moment she makes it.

Back to Hazel, who make a series of stupid decisions, including lying to the police. You’d think the wife of a criminal defense lawyer would know of her right to say, “I don’t want to answer questions about that topic.” Most of Hazel’s narrative is preposterous. Characters effortlessly hack telephones and obtain fake passports. The brief description of legal proceedings betrays an unfamiliarity with the law. The ending — well, pretty much the last half of the novel — is less than engaging. Multiple loose ends continue to dangle at the story’s end (e.g., how do police deduce from a jawbone that washed ashore that the victim was stabbed in the chest multiple times?). The novel’s first half at least generates mild suspense, but it fizzles out well before the end. An epilog delivers a feel-good resolution to the protagonists’ lives that feels forced.

Two unlikable protagonists stuck in an unbelievable plot compete to see which one will make the worst decisions. Some of the setup is interesting but the novel in its entirety doesn’t live up to its modestly promising start.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

Holy crap! I did NOT see any of that coming!- Those were my exact thoughts upon finishing this book! I really enjoyed how the story was told through multiple characters points of views and I always love a good unreliable narrator! I don’t want to say too much to give anything away, but if you’re into psychological thrillers, definitely add this book to your list!

You know I’m not much of a thriller reader, so when I find one I like it’s a big win and 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗥𝗢𝗪𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗪𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗡 by Robyn Harding was one such win. This is a psychological thriller told from the perspectives of two very different women. Lee is living on the streets of Seattle. Pre-COVID she owned her own bustling restaurant in New York, but the shut down and having borrowed money from the wrong person, led her to a secret life, living in her car. Hazel appears to have everything Lee doesn’t. She lives in a huge glass house in one of the waterfront enclaves of the city. She doesn’t need to worry about money or a roof over her head, but Hazel is miserable and desperate to escape her marriage.⁣
⁣
After a near drowning, the two women form an unlikely friendship and a tenuous commitment to each other. That’s all you get because I don’t want to give away the story, but rest assured this story involves much more. There are bad guys, secrets, lies, everything you expect from a psychological thriller and it’s all delivered in a fast-paced, cat-and-mouse sort of way. Beware there are some seriously messed up characters, but they add a lot of flavor to this binge worthy book. I flew through it, rarely needing to suspend disbelief and that’s a winner for me! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣
⁣
Thanks to @grandcentralpub for an electronic copy of #TheDrowningWoman

Wow, wow, wow this book had so many twists and turns - I gasped once or twice when plot lines were revealed. This was a book I could not wait to pick up again just to find out what happened next. The author did an incredible job at giving backstory on all of the characters at the perfect times. My only complaint is that I felt the ending was a bit abrupt and I wanted so much more from each character. There were a few plots that could make for a great prequel or even a sequel. I look forward to reading more books by this author. Thank you to Robyn Harding, Grand Central Publishing and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

🌊Book Review🌊
*
Summary: Lee Gulliver never thought she’d find herself living on the streets—no one ever does—but when her restaurant fails, and she falls deeper into debt, she leaves her old life behind with nothing but her clothes and her Toyota Corolla. In Seattle, she parks in a secluded spot by the beach to lay low and plan her next move—until early one morning, she sees a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean. Lee hauls the woman back to the surface, but instead of appreciation, she is met with fury. The drowning woman, Hazel, tells her that she wanted to die, that she’s trapped in a toxic, abusive marriage, that she’s a prisoner in her own home. Lee has thwarted her one chance to escape her life.

Out of options, Hazel retreats to her gilded cage, and Lee thinks she’s seen the last of her, until her unexpected return the next morning. Bonded by disparate but difficult circumstances, the women soon strike up a close and unlikely friendship. And then one day, Hazel makes a shocking request: she wants Lee to help her disappear. It’ll be easy, Hazel assures her, but Lee soon learns that nothing is as it seems, and that Hazel may not be the friend Lee thought she was.
*
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
*
My thoughts: this was such a fun fast paced thriller! I loved Lee’s character, in some ways it almost reminded me of Gone Girl. It was almost 5 stars but there were a little too many unrealistic twists at the end, some that were just slightly too unbelievable. Robyn Harding is such a fantastic writer, one of my favorite thriller writers around since before I found Bookstagram 😂this one hooks you right from the first chapter and doesn’t let go until the very end. 🥰
*
QOTD- who is one of your go to authors that you will always read what they write?!
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#thedrowningwoman #robynharding #bookreview #bookreviewer #bookstagram #booksofinstagram #booksofig #booksofinsta #bibliophile #booknerd #bookworm #bookwormsunite #bookish #bookobsessed #bookaddict #bookaesthetic #thrillerbooks #thrillerbooksaddict #thrillerreads #readersofinstagram #readmorebooks #readersgonnarea

▫️REVIEW▫️

The Drowning Woman ~ Robyn Harding

•When Lee rescues a drowning woman, she has no idea that her life is about the change as a result. Living in her car trying to recover from financial failure, she bonds with this woman named Hazel who is facing a series of unfortunate circumstances herself. When Hazel asks Lee to help her disappear, a wild series of events takes place - including a dead body and a tangle of secrets.•

Loved this! I’ve been veering away from thrillers but this was just enough thrill with some salacious twists to keep me interested. I totally appreciated the juxtaposition of these two women - both desperate but with different ways of dealing. Perfect for summer - a wild ride filled with thrills!

A solid mystery that had me thinking I knew where it was going but was happy to find out I was wrong. Twisty and page turning and a very satisfying ending!

Robyn Harding does it again! This was such an entertaining book. It is filled with some great twists. I could not put this one down, it was simply addicting.

Honestly, The Drowning Woman was one of THE best thrillers I have read this year. Twist after twist and I was SO into it I lost sleep. Must Read!

I was definitely curious as to where this was going. Lee has had to resort to living in her car and saves Hazel from drowning. The two strike up a friendship when Hazel confides in Lee that she needs to escape from her life that looks incredible on the outside. While the twists were fine and sort of interesting, I had trouble suspending disbelief with Hazel's backstory.
Thank you so much to Grand Central Pub for the ARC of this one!

Thank you Grand Central Pub for my review copy.

The book did start off a little slow for me, but once it picked up I couldn’t stop reading!! The twists and turns took me by surprise and I loved the way it all ended.