This book was different. I thought I would give it a try for something new. It had an interesting premise and reminded me somewhat of "The Handmaid's Tale". It was good and an enjoyable read. I would recommend it to fans of Margaret Atwood.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

As I write this review, I am somewhat unsure of how I feel about the book. It was absolutely interesting, but I’m not positive that I fully comprehend it. The book is about a family of 3 girls, a mom and a dad, living on an island, separated from the toxic world beyond. In that world, men are hurtful towards woman, but the father, King, is a different man who has professed to love woman and wants to take care of them and heal them. Women come to their island, completely in ruins... hair falling out, blessing from the nose and gums, with bruises and throubles of all sorts. They are healed in their home... given the “water cure” until they are well and they leave again. The girls watch these women and occasionally talk with them. Meanwhile, they undergo their own therapies. Some of them require that they hurt each other. Some of them require them to be weighted down in the pool, so they are prepared for their own water cure if they one day need it. They girls never leave the island. King however, goes to the mainland every so often to get the things they need... food, medicine, etc. on one of the trips something happens and things are never the same for this family. I can’t say more without spoiling things, but as I said in the beginning of the review, it was certainly an interesting story. It felt a little like a book I might have read years ago for AP English or for a college lit class where there are underlying meanings that I needed to grasp, but may have struggled to fully uncover. I felt like I was missing something, even after the big reveal near the end. None the less, this book was different and I appreciated the creativity of the story and the relationships which were explored and whatever I may have missed, did not take away from the parts of the book I found interesting. If you read it and get all the underlying meaning... let me know. I’d love to discuss with you!

I can’t even put into words about how I feel about this book. It was bizarre and haunting, and strange and confusing... I want someone else to read this so I can talk about it with them. I think for that reason, it would make a good book club book. Not my usual type of read, I like more directness, but this was a good one that kept me thinking long after the book was over.

Men weren't present in Grace, Lia, and Sky's lives. Only King, their father. This was for their protection because men were the cause of all the harm and poison in the world. Being hidden away from them was the only way to survive.

But when King disappears during a routine supply run, and Mother also doesn't return from her trip beyond the sea border, the sisters are stuck on their beach with three castaways. Men. And this changes everything.

Sophie Mackintosh's debut novel, "The Water Cure", is a palpably tense look through a dystopian window at a family's search for a unique utopia, and what they end up finding instead.

This is "The First Book of Calamity Leek" meets "The Handmaid's Tale" meets "My Absolute Darling" in all of each of their weird wackiness and horrifyingly resolute honesty about what makes society (and separation) so imperfect.

This is a stunning debut novel with writing that behaves like watercolors, painting each new page with dynamic emotion: angst, elation, peace, dread. It was unusual, confusing, and eerie in all the best ways. I could easily see this playing out on the big screen, although it would take a master director to get it entirely right.

**Many thanks to NetGalley, Doubleday, and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Let's start with the obvious...this cover is gorgeous. Also this book has an enticing promotional blurb (although, after reading I'm not sure it's totally on point, but it sure did make me to want to read this book.)

The book itself is a bit of a mystery. I think my beef with the promo copy is that things are not so very specific as "HANDMAID'S TALE meets THE VIRGIN SUICIDES". Ultimately few questions about the (dystopian?) world these sisters live in are answered. Instead everything is far more dreamy and vague. Who are the women who came before? Who are the (flashback?) interludes written by? Are men really dangerous? Are the ghosts real? Who knows? Maybe the answers to these questions won't matter to some readers, but I personally wanted to know more.

This book reminded me a lot of another book I recently reviewed, "Still Life"--it's dystopian fiction that is far less interested in building that dystopian world than in describing the relationships of the women who live within it. If you're interested in the former, this book will frustrate you. But if the later sounds up your alley, you'll likely dig this.

Ultimately this is a story about (dysfunctional, co-dependent) sisters, the world they THINK they live in, and how their worldview changes when some strangers are introduced into their ecosystem. The three sections are very different in structure, but do a nice job of fleshing out the basic details, and the writing is lush and vivid. However, for me though, I was left wanting a bit more.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

A mystical debut of somber love and lethal control.

Three sisters live on an island with their Mother. Their father has just disappeared and is assumed dead. They know this because he left their island to gather supplies from the toxic world that surrounds their haven. But it is not so simple. There is a certain relief in his departure due to his harshly devised and ever present "cures" to keep his family safe. But in his wake, their Mother takes the lead and follows his example. The pain repeats in his image.

Everything changes when two men and a boy wash ashore. Quickly, their household traditions fall wayside. What was once clean becomes a mess. Their Mother leaves for supplies and presumably, help. The sisters are left with three strangers, weeds overgrowing their carefully cultivated landscape. As they test the boundaries, so do the sisters. Although their father taught them to fear other men because they made women sick, one sister is particularly interested.

Sophie Mackintosh never underestimates her readers, peppering quiet and alarming glimpses into the pasts of the three sisters. There is perfect room to fill in gaps, which suits the fierce intelligence and horror of The Water Cure. The fight and release of control between the memory of their father, the three men, and the sisters, is what unites them again. It's a beautiful and deft awakening that feels far from dystopia.

While reading The Water Cure I was reminded of the Turkish film Mustang, which similarly follows a family of sisters under the control of men. But instead of an island, they're trapped in their own home. Next to this debut, it serves as a reminder that the harsh truths of both stories aren't too far from contemporary reality.

This book tells the story of three sisters; Grace, Lia, and Sky. They have been raised by their parents, King and Mother, apart from the rest of society, which their parents have told them is damaged and damaging. Their parents force them to do all sorts of self-destructive rituals, which they say are good for them and they also drug them. The story is unclear about what really is happening in the rest of the world. Their father, King, has died, three men wash up on the shore, and soon afterwards their mother disappears and the three girls are left to deal with the men on their own. Part dystopian novel and part psychological thriller, this novel tells a unique story.

This book is about three little girls who are basically kept alone from the rest of the world, and sheltered with their mother and father. The book was a little weird getting into, and hard for me to understand as it was a "new world" than what I was used to. I would give this book 4/5 stars. Thanks for the chance to read it!

Interesting place setting. I would have liked more of the family's history flushed out. I felt I was only reading topical and not getting a true understanding. I did like the crazy feel of the father figure and the interesting way the author had him brainwash the women. Readers of the Handmaid's Tale may find this interesting, but wanting more.

I do my best to write good reviews for every book I read. I understand how hard it is for the writer to pour out part of their soul into the story. How the characters come alive and tell the writer their story and that the author is a conduit for them. Truly, I do understand. Unfortunately I am unable to write a good review for this book. Though the characters were well written and decently defined, I felt that there was more to the story that needed to be told in this book in order for everything to fall into place and make sense.

The description of the book makes you believe that there is gonna be a huge story in the book yet the entire time I was reading it all I was was thinking was, "where is the story, where is the explanation for what has happened". I just felt like the book was going no where and I was just reading a empty plot and story line. The plot and story line was there, but there just wasn't enough back story to fill them. Again this is my opinion and as with all books it depends on the reader and how they read the book.

The Water Cure is a difficult book to review. It is so different from what I usually read, yet I was gripped by the strange story from the start. The writing is elegant and the way the plot unfolds has me eagerly turning the pages, wanting to know what would happen next. It is a truly creative and captivating story, and I certainly recommend it!

Mackintosh writes in absolutely beautiful and unflinching prose about the desolation and destruction of a family.

The book is set in a remote, seaside home of a family of a father (King), a mother (Mother), and three sisters (Lia, Grace, and Sky). The sisters are raised in isolation and are taught by their parents to fear, hate, and avoid men. They're told that interacting with men would make them physically sick, and it is unclear throughout the story whether this is true or not in their world, due to the isolation the reader experiences along with the sisters. Ironically, their father, is the oligarch of the family, and uses physical and emotional abuse to ensure complete control.

The story is in the point of view of either one of the three sisters (mainly Lia or Grace), or in the point of view of all three of them (using the pronoun "we"). Love is a big deal for the family, and (again, ironically) they have questionable therapies that tend to be emotionally and physically abusive that their parents use to "prove" their love for one another and to "cleanse" themselves of the poisonous air that comes from men living in the mainland. However, things change when three men are found washed up on their shore, and the three sisters must decide for themselves to follow their family's teachings (and therefore, their love), or to find out what they want for themselves.

Throughout the novel, the reader is able to experience the crippling and claustrophobic isolation that the sisters undergo on a daily basis. In the beginning I found myself in disbelief over King's teachings that the outside world, full of men, could cause physical and emotional illness in women. However, as events unfurl, I was left wondering if I was wrong, and that (at least in their world), men could really cause all those things King claimed.

Mackintosh does a beautiful job creating a world like ours, but in a more intense scale. Like our world, women live in fear and must be continuously cleansing themselves from the poisons of men, in order to feel safe and whole. This novel explores a world where women have no other choice but to stand up for themselves in the face of annihilation. But then again, is that not the same in our world? This novel is empowering and awakening, and I would urge everyone to read it at least once.

The Water Cure is a story of 3 sisters who have been kept save from men and the "toxins" of the outside world. Their home appears to once have been a spa used for healing women of these toxins and damages brought on by men by using The Water Cure.

Sophie Mackintosh uses the voice of each of the sisters to tell their part of the story, each from their own perspective, building on layers of truths, memory, lies and perceptions.

The book was compelling and made for a fast read. Ultimately, it left the reader with more questions than answers.

For such an evasively written novel, this book was fairly intriguing. I became interested in this book when I saw it was compared to The Handmaids Tale meets The Virgin Suicides. 

As mentioned before the plot was rather evasive in letting you know anything direct but that's what makes this story work so well. This novel raises many tensions as you question what is really going on physically  and psychologically. 

The shades of gray vs the black and white, clear cut ending did leave me wanting more and some things answered, however in a good way. This is a hard thing o pull off in books and I felt the author did a tremendous job of balancing it all in a poetic way.

The plot itself was captivating and kept me reading on searching for answers, I already knew I wouldn't most likely get. i felt that each character benefited the story and worked well to keep it moving along for a one click read. 4 stars from me.

Three girls and their parents live alone on a supposed island. Taught that men are disease ridden things to be avoided at all costs.

There are drills, treatments and oh, yeah...the are all crazy as loons. We are left to figure out how they got there, why they are here and who knocked one of them up???

Honestly we are given no details. No questions were answered and you are left to interpret what is going on. And there is something going on and since I have no idea what, I'm going to say it was some type of cultish abuse going on.

But who knows. When I was finished I felt like I had wasted hours on an unfinished and unedited story. Told only from the viewpoints of the three sisters, I would have liked to hear from the parents. What happened to them and the outside world? Who knows. Not the reader.

Sorry but this one I will give a hard pass.

Netgalley/Doubleday Books    My paperwork says January 8, 2019

The Water Cure is about three sisters living on an island with Mother and "King", isolated from the rest of the world. They grow up learning the mainland is toxic, making women physically ill, and that men are not to be trusted. They perform rituals, or therapies, to rid their bodies of possible toxins and as prevention from any they may encounter. They grow up enclosed by the barbed wire fence and the buoys with the words Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Their world is turned upside down when King disappears, and three strange men show up on the shore. Told in first person perspective from two of the sisters, Lia and Grace, and interlaced with chapters written in the third person.

This book was.....odd. The pitch for this book was "The Handmaid's Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men", but I really didn't get many Handmaid's Tale vibes from this book other than it was feminist and possibly dystopic. I gave it 3 stars because it was something different, a new plot I haven't encountered before. I liked that the author didn't feel the need to explain everything and left the reader to interpret the situation by themselves. However, I feel like most of the book was this way and nothing was really explained, so I have a lot of unanswered questions. It was a quick read, but the ending fell flat for me. Overall, I would recommend this book to someone looking for a short, but deep, read.

I don't even know how many stars to give this. I'm not even sure what I just read. It was NOTHING like the description that's for sure. I was expecting some "go get em girl" crosses Mad Max. The only thing this can be described as is extreme Stockholm Syndrome meets Stranger Things with some psych ward journaling thrown in. Asides from being extremely hard to read language wise - jumping between third person and first person, viewpoint to viewpoint etc. it took until about 3/4 of the way (when the men arrived) through the book for me to even find something considering a plot. I still haven't got a clue if they're in a post ap world or if King was simply batshit crazy or if it was the mom who was crazy and what exactly the women were being "cured" of. The three girls are frankly insane, They're not feminists, they're cult-member-crazy insane. This isn't a feminist book, it's a rambling, chaotic, (I can't even call it a thriller because it wasn't thrilling for most of the book). I'm only giving it two stars because the last quarter of the book had some semblance of bringing everything together and anything resembling excitement and sense. What a confusing book! Definitely not reading it again, I had to read something else after to get this one scrubbed out of my head.

This was such a strange yet brilliant book. It hooked me in from the beginning because it was so different from anything I recall reading. It felt like a novel I’d be assigned to read for an English Literature class, filled with symbolism and a dystopian feminist theme. At first it seemed almost cult-like — they’re extremely paranoid about pretty much everything including getting sick or being harmed from all the “toxins” around them. The women and King are also always dressed in white, I imagine white symbolizing "purity" against those said toxins.

There were times were I also felt this novel was a little bit more sinister than I anticipated. Mother treats her daughters horrendously, not only abusing them but forcing them to do horrible things to themselves and each other. And I have to also say that up until I discovered the relation between Grace and King, I was disturbed but none-the-less, it’s still pretty gross to get your step-daughter pregnant.

I still have so many unanswered questions! Why did they end up this way? How’d they get there? When is this? What happened to the rest of the world? Where did they come from? What’s up with King? The entire thing seems so poetic and simple with the way the words flow together. This will definitely stick with me for a while.

The Water Cure tells the story of three sisters who live a secluded, and strange, life on a perceived island. On this island, the sisters are educated by their father and mother on the abusive and toxic life that women are forced to live on the mainland. That if they were not careful they would become sick with disease from the radicals in the air or if touched by someone other than themselves. Lastly men, especially, are to be feared as they are created and made to harm women. Becoming contaminated is greatly emphasized while reading.

Immediately you realize that something is not quite right with this family, nor the island, and you begin to feel uneasy while reading. Every so often the author brushes on something that can be perceived as very wrong. Yet, it is made to seem quite right. On one hand, you are made to believe that this secluded hideaway home is grand and necessary. Although there is a great sense of decay and filth. Each of the sisters must go through rituals created by King, the father, and their mother. These rituals which are designed to make them stronger also have the ability to do more harm than good. From burning themselves to harming each other, it is apparent that these required rituals have a very negative mental effect. Even the sisters begin to slowly turn from each other.

Although the writing can be a little difficult to read, it makes perfect sense with the book. The character building is subtle but wonderful. While you do not get backgrounds on the supporting characters, you can easily put that together yourself. The three sisters evolve throughout the book and their actions begin to become understandable. Written in the points of view of the sisters, the narrative often does not make much sense. I found myself piecing together what I believe and sort of building my own story and weaving it in with what the author wrote.

Sophie Mackintosh did something different. I feel that readers will either like The Water Cure or they will not. I do not see much in between feelings.

I read the first few pages and gave up. I have no patience for a book this confusing. I liked the premise from the blurb, but I wasn't willing to navigate the confusion.