The premise of this book was super intriguing so I couldn’t wait to start reading. Although the pace was slow at first, I did really enjoy getting to know the characters. The plot picked up about halfway through and it was interesting enough, but I struggled to stay focused as I wasn’t fully invested in the story. Overall, an okay read and I wouldn’t rule out reading more from the author in the future.

Graeme Reynolds' "Dark and Lonely Water" delivers a chilling and suspenseful narrative that seamlessly weaves together horror, mystery, and a touch of conspiracy. The story follows Samantha Ashlyn, who is reluctantly drawn back to her hometown to investigate a series of drownings, only to discover unsettling parallels with her own childhood experiences.

The novel masterfully combines elements of psychological horror with supernatural elements, creating an atmospheric and tension-filled narrative. Reynolds skillfully builds a sense of dread from the very beginning, immersing the reader in a world where the line between reality and ancient evil blurs.

Samantha Ashlyn serves as a compelling protagonist, and her journey from initial reluctance to the realization of a dark conspiracy is both engaging and emotionally resonant. The character's complex past adds depth to the narrative, creating a connection between the reader and the unfolding mystery.

The pacing of the story is well-executed, with a careful balance between moments of intense horror and slower, more atmospheric scenes. The gradual unraveling of the ancient evil and the revelation of a centuries-old conspiracy keep the reader hooked, eager to discover the truth behind the mysterious drownings.

Reynolds excels in creating vivid and unsettling imagery, bringing the eerie atmosphere of the town and its dark secrets to life. The author's descriptive prose enhances the horror elements, making the novel a genuinely immersive and spine-chilling experience.

The collaboration between Samantha and the disgraced police diver adds an intriguing dynamic to the narrative. Their partnership brings a sense of urgency to the story as they race against time to uncover the truth and prevent further loss of lives. The suspense is palpable, and the stakes are high, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat.

While the novel is a gripping and intense horror experience, some readers may find certain scenes to be quite graphic and disturbing. Additionally, the complexity of the conspiracy may be challenging for those who prefer straightforward narratives.

In conclusion, "Dark and Lonely Water" is a compelling and well-crafted horror novel that successfully blends supernatural elements with a gripping conspiracy. Graeme Reynolds delivers a dark and atmospheric tale, filled with tension and unexpected twists. Fans of horror and mystery genres will find this book to be a satisfying and thrilling read, with its well-developed characters and a plot that keeps you guessing until the very end.

Creepy, haunting fusion of ancient folklore and modern urban myth, with some interesting and realistic characters and a really nasty twist ending. Good stuff.

I honestly didn't think id like the story that much but i haven't been able to put the book down, who dont like to read, My son started reading it too and now were are both fighting over whos gunna read it for a while lol

"A Dark and Fragmented Tale with Unfulfilled Potential"

This short story ventures into various intriguing genres, from B-grade sea monster horror to southern gothic to cult horror infused with folk mythology. However, these disparate elements fail to cohesively merge within the limited space, leaving the narrative feeling disjointed. The characters, while present, exist as truncated archetypes, often to a degree that hinders the reader's ability to take the unfolding events seriously. An evident example is the oversight of a seasoned journalist failing to notice the coincidence of names between a menacing sergeant and a well-meaning man well-versed in mythology. Moreover, a few minor misspellings, though not overly distracting, do detract from the overall reading experience.

This story serves as passable afternoon leisure reading by the lakeside, providing a momentary diversion. However, it lacks the lasting impact to remain memorable. Like many other readers, I found this book to have its moments of brilliance as well as moments of stagnation. The narrative's sagging middle section proves a common pitfall in horror novels, and this book succumbs to this issue. It does, however, redeem itself with a strong start and a satisfactory conclusion. Ultimately, it possesses potential that remains unfulfilled, leaving a sense of missed opportunity.

This was a disappointing read. I like the idea of this old folklore monster, but the execution wasn't good. Like everything happened instantly, there was no real development of the characters or the situations they were in it just was like not enough time must keep going on to the next thing. It ended up with me not really caring about anything that happened, the story not being believable in the context of the world it is set in, and just not really a great read. I think there were two or three brief moments that were a glimmer of creepy fun, but that was not enough to save the story.

There were many things I enjoyed about this book - the gruesome killings done by said creature - but there were also many things I didn't like.
To me, the rest of the plot felt a bit like the shallow end of the pool, a bit boring without much depth. The main character was irritating, and her best friend was also draining (and she barely makes more than 2 appearances
The ending was super interesting, but it felt like we got there too soon. I wanted more meat to sink my teeth into, just like our creature in the story.
An okay read, I just finished it feeling hungry for more.
There were also a few inconsistencies? Sam says that she can smell stewed beef, but then Marcus says he made it from the lamb - so not beef, but lamb instead?
There are a few typos and repeats throughout the copy I received too.

Unfortunately I ended up DNFing this book. I tried to stick with it but the main character was insufferable and the story just really wasn't gripping me enough to endure the dialogue

This was a surprising read f or me as someone who doesn't scare easily. The horror at the heart of the novel is expertly crafted, with Reynolds building tension and suspense with each passing chapter. The supernatural elements are both frightening and fascinating, drawing on a range of mythological and folkloric influences to create a unique and terrifying monster. The scenes of violence and gore are graphic and intense, adding to the overall sense of horror and dread. Though the characters were hard for me to relate to and affected my enjoyment, the vibe and aesthetic was worth the read.
Full review to come on YouTube.

Definitely worth a read if you like horror with lake monsters! I really liked the build up of what is thought to be drownings to definitely the work of something that is in the water.
Just when you think you know how the story is going, it changes again. Definitely a page turner with the right amount of horror and suspense.
The ending was really a surprise!
I would recommend.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Love love love the cover, anything horror and water related I’m in. Definitely gave me the creepy vibes. an easy read, it grabbed my attention right away. Sam goes back to her old hometown to investigate some recent drownings and joining her is Chris a police diver. A page turner, will keep you entertained.

Thank you. Netgalley for the ARC for a review.

I have to say I quite enjoyed Dark and Lonely Water. It’s a fascinating fast paced creature story based around English folklore. Sam, a reporter and single mother of twins, gets saddled with investigating a series of drownings in her old home town, a place she’d rather not return to. But if she wants to keep her job she has no choice so reluctantly agrees to go. It’s not long before she begins to suspect these aren’t mere accidental drownings. Worse, it seems as if there is a coverup going on that goes back for a very long time. Can Sam and Chris, a police diver, uncover what is really going on before it’s too late? This is a quick but enjoyable read with some genuinely creepy moments. This is the first book I’ve read by Graeme Reynolds and I have to say I’m impressed and look forward to checking out more of his work in the future. I’d like to thank BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of Dark and Lonely Water.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R24IFTA8OF5I3S/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

First of all, my thanks to Netgalley and Crystal Lake Publishing for allowing me the pleasure of reading this book for an honest review.

I am one day short of publication, but either way, "Congratulations! on the new book!" I'm sure that publishing a book is similar to birthing a baby. A lot of turmoil and crying and screaming, and somewhere in there, hopefully, is good sex.

I really, really enjoyed reading this story. The plot zipped right along, the characters were well written, and the graphic, gory bits were appropriately graphic and gory.

What I really enjoyed was the way that the story all came together at the end in a way that I was completely not expecting. What started as a seemingly reporter/cop friend duo investigating a string of deadly water drownings turned into a centuries-old folk horror with ties going back generations. I quite loved the ending and am now officially enraptured by this new-to-me author. Well done!

P.S. Please fix the itty bitty editing issues towards the end. A clean reader's copy is always a delight!

Fast and well paced modern pulp, filled with twists and surprises I did not see coming. Truly creepy and with a monster have made me vary of bodies of water(remind me to never vacation in England again). There is some truly horrific and gory scenes here that will keep you on the egde of your seat!
Reynolds has managed to create some great and believable characters in Dark and Lonely water, full of flaws and grace. On top of that, the interactions between family members is some of the most realistic writing I have read in a long while!

Reynolds belongs on lists with the greatest British male horror writers, among the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Adam Nevill and Shaun Hutson.

This is simply not a book to miss out on, go get it!

Disclaimer: I received an ARC from NetGalley for a fair review

I should also note that this review is, obviously, strictly my own opinion and other's mileage may vary. Also, light spoilers.

I liked that it was a fast paced horror that didn't shy away from the gruesome. Though I will say, the gruesome went from o to 100 about 2/3 of the way through and the quick switch was very jarring. I liked the overall arc that this was something that has been going on for a very long time, a cycle perpetuated by outside forces, and that there were folks in on the cover-up. I had inklings about where the ending was going about halfway and was pretty happy that's where it indeed went.

Unfortunately, the lackluster writing made reading this a slog. I almost DNFed it a few times but I was interested enough to see it through to the end because I just wanted to see how the story was resolved. There were some formatting issues, more than I'm used to for an ARC, and repeating sections and random quotation marks tripped me up a few times. The end wasn't worth it to me and really lacked any sort of point. I'm all for hopeless endings when they make sense, but the author seemed to set up and ending where the protagonist would fight back and she just didn't. What's the point of setting things up for a person to break a cycle and then they don't even try?

I wanted to like this book because I love creepy things in water but it just missed on a lot of levels for me.

Wow, this book was interesting. I loved the concept for this and thought it was well written. It featured eloquent characterization and pleasant dialogue.

A short, dark story, with interesting-sounding genre blends (from B-grade sea monster horror to southern gothic to cult horror with folk mythology), but these genres don't have the space to weave together and make something coherent. The characters are also created in truncated archetypes, sometimes to such levels that it's impossible to take seriously what's going on on the page. (I'm sorry, but I can't forgive the one small detail that a seasoned journalist wouldn't notice the coincidence of the names of the menacing sergeant and the well-meaning mythology-savvy man.) In addition, there are a few misspellings, nothing too jarring, but a little distracting.
It's adequate for afternoon relaxing reading on a lakeside, but the next day I won't even remember I ever had it in my hands.

Samantha "Sam" Ashlyn is a reporter for the News 24/7, a web-based news source. Her editor, Jason Holmes, has clued into mysterious drownings in Lancashire, and knowing Sam is from that area originally, he dispatches her to find out what's going on. She's reluctant to go—a widowed mother of two, Sam relies on her mother-in-law to watch the kiddos while she works. Also, she has a standing girl's night with Heidi, a fashion correspondent for a much better paying magazine; Heidi is more than a drinking and carousing partner, she' a necessary sympathetic ear for all of Sam's woes.

When the editor agrees to not only put Sam up in good lodging but to pay for daycare up in Lancashire, she's more amenable to the idea of going. The scant details around the story itself turn out to be final push. Drowning in her old hometown of Lancashire might be attributable to a sadistic killer much like the famed Manchester Pusher legend, a bogeyman who supposedly shoves people into the river and watches them die. She agrees to take on the story, packs up her family, and heads out …

When the promised amenities turn out not to be at all what the editor promised, Sam has to appeal to her one remaining family member in the area, Marcus, the uncle who raised her. She has no love for the man, has not contacted him since leaving for school and life in the big city at age eighteen. However, she's pleasantly surprised by his willingness to welcome her back into the home as well as let bygones be bygones. It's a relief to leave the kids with him, since they seem to take quite nicely to him.

This allows Sam to explore the story itself, involving a series of drownings. Another of which occurs while she is visiting the area. The police are oddly reluctant to talk about it, seem to be covering something up. The surviving families are unconvinced by the official stories of simple drownings—after all, the corpses are unaccountably missing limbs. When Sam talks to Chris Buchanan, a cop who was suspended after attempting to retrieve a couple of victims and claimed to have seen something uncanny, she discovers the deaths are far older than she's been made to believe.

There may be a killer on the loose, someone tied to folklore a little more outré than the simplistic Manchester Pusher. This mystery has ties with a bit of Liverpudlian folklore about an aquatic horror called Ginny Greenteeth, a creature who supposedly draws her victims underwater to drown, gnaw, or claw them to pieces. The police are more than passive-aggressively hushing things up; they seem to be actively thwarting inquiries. Can Sam penetrate the conspiracy of silence and find out what is going on and possibly put a stop to it? Graeme Reynolds spins a yarn of mystery, folk horror, and crushing terror in Dark and Lonely Water.

Some horror fiction introduces us to characters who are immediately sympathetic and allows the story to unfold around them while maintaining an intimate study of how the horrors and stresses those characters endure affect them. Others trust their readers to follow along for a little while despite having a protagonist who is as far from sympathetic as you can get but are caught up with intrigue and strangeness.

Dark and Lonely Water falls into the latter school. This is a plot driven novel featuring a somewhat insufferable protagonist. When we meet her, Sam is brash, takes zero nonsense, is inattentive to her children, is not terribly good at handling her work/life ratio, is a functioning alcoholic, and is pretty much on the verge of self-destruction. She meets the gig in her old stomping grounds with reluctance … but not total resistance. As we spend time with her, we discover she's a product of the world she occupies and the unresolved traumas she's endured—particularly the loss of her mother in a pond/lake behind the family house in Lancashire. The city living seems to have hardened her as well, and her friendship with fashion correspondent Heidi (who encourages the consumption of at least one bottle of wine a night and often more) does not help. As we develop an understanding of the situation that made her, we nurture hopes for the character to climb out of the well of the soul that she's been dwelling in. However, there's a long ride to get to that place, which is surprising given the brevity of the book itself. A good half of the thing passes before she takes a self-evaluation, commits to a different course, and faces the temptation to slip back into her old habits.

Dark and Lonely Water is not a doorstop novel from the 1980s. It is a lean and mean supernatural thriller that clocks in at just over 200 pages. The prose is engaging, the action is written well, and the plotting is good and tight. There's a bit of a rushed quality to the finale, but that is a good match for the raised stakes. Sam is allowed only a brief span of time to assemble a plan and find some allies for the final confrontation. As one might expect, their plans go to pot because they do not have either the time or information they need, and Sam eventually faces a memorably horrifying ultimatum.

When Dark and Lonely Water is at its best, Graeme Reynolds channels the same kind of breathless prose and shocking scope of early James Herbert. As with Herbert's books such as The Rats, The Fog, or The Dark, the plotting of Dark and Lonely Water is engaging, the revelations are surprising, and the horror stuff is down, dirty, and deliciously meanspirited. Reynolds' novel is not as gory as those Herbert penned (though it is unafraid to show some decidedly nasty scenes), but the grim tone, the characterizations, and the many twists are on par with the best of those works.

Regular readers of Reynolds' fiction will be surprised at the lack of werewolves in the narrative. However, there is at least one specific mention of events from others of the author's other books to suggest a connection here. Dark and Lonely Water is a stand-alone novel that works quite nicely on its own, but it is also a part of the author's larger fictional universe. As well, the book has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the folklore and mythological elements could easily lend themselves to a sequel or even a crossover work with the author's other works.

Dark and Lonely Water is an entertaining read of the grim horror variety. Fans of character driven stories or those who require protagonists who are sympathetic out the gate will be left wanting, but those readers who enjoy following around an abrasive personality and coming to discover the reality about a strange, flesh-eating creature of folklore through her eyes will find plenty to enjoy here.
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A special thank you to NetGalley and Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales From the Darkest Depths for supplying an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really love folk horror. There is something about reading a book about any legend or myth that has some truth to it that always draws me in. I was reading right a long hoping things would go good for Sam and Chris when the unthinkable happens. I was not ready for the ending of this story but what an ending it was!

I wanted to like this story. It had an exciting premise with great potential for spookiness. Unfortunately, I struggled. I couldn't get into the story. The writing style was grating, but more so were all of the editing errors. So many yanked me right out of the book.