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.

Honestly, I'm sort of speechless. I read this book in about 3 hours, and now I feel like I need to sit with my feelings about it for 3 days.

The story is a radical feminist allegory, a dark fairytale that will probably resonate most with women. Not that men shouldn't read it--they should...They should witness the simmering rage beneath Mackintosh's words, and understand that this rage is something many women feel every day, just moving about in the world. Some of the passages were so profoundly truthful and cathartic that I had to stop reading for a few minutes just to turn them over in my head again. "Yes! THIS!" I wanted to scream, every single time.

The language is beautiful and spare, the atmosphere dreamy--which I thought enhanced the feeling that this place could be anywhere and any time, including now. I would compare the book to The Virgin Suicides, but I found it far more satisfying. Eugenides' novel is gorgeous, but ultimately it's told from the point of view of the boys orbiting around the Lisbon girls; this was more like being inside the house with them, inside their brains, and I relished it.

I can't say any more without spoiling things or influencing how people understand the story. I think it's vague in places because what you're meant to take away is specific to the reader. Anyway, PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. I will probably be reading it again myself very soon! :)

The Water Cure is billed as a mystery and I would safely say that that is true, though maybe not in the way the author intended. It follows three sisters, with three separate voices and perspectives as the reader is taken on a journey of exploration.

Some books are snacks. Some are desserts. This is a seven-course meal. The language is at times very beautiful and poetic. Pieces coming out in short verses seemingly. It isn’t an quick and easy read, one will have to savior the meaning and the language.

However, what makes this a mystery is that the reader doesn’t always know what is happening. The ending isn’t satisfying. I literally caught myself scratching me head at the end.

There are things here to like. It is a “thinker” and that is a great thing in a book. It’s just not how it was billed.