Like many other reviewers, I found this book to have its highs and lows. My least favorite thing within horror novels is when the story lulls right in the middle and this book unfortunately does this. I did think it started and ended strong and was enjoyable, just needed some more excitement in the middle.

My journey with this book was a bit of a rollercoaster. It started off super strong, with a gripping first chapter that immediately drew me in. Initial thought was this is a five-star book. The writing was good, pacing was fast, creep factor was real. I was getting Mira Grant "Into the Drowning Deep" vibes, a book I absolutely adored.

Then the middle of the books started to go downhill in my opinion. The pace slowed down quite a bit and the author focused too much on the personal relationships that the female MC has. There are pages and pages of her fighting with her family and friend about her job, drinking, priorities, etc. The book is too short for this digression. And Reynolds uses one of my least favorite character tropes here also. I hate the rude, disrespectful child whose behavior gets written off as the result of an absent parent. It's a pet peeve of mine, but one I have to dock stars for.

The ending of the book picked up the pacing from the middle but had problems of its own. There were some plot holes that frustrated me. (You've got a map, maybe think about what happened in your own past in relation to said map. Has no one heard of cops that carry guns??? Those are the supplies you choose to bring to the final confrontation? Really??) I also thought the ending fell flat. We're in the middle of the big battle and then it just. Stops. And the book's over. At least it was pretty creepy and we got some body horror.

Final thoughts: Book started as a 5 star and ended at 3. Real rating would be 3.5 but I'll be generous and bump it up to 4. I would try more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

7/10

ARC Provided by publisher

Fairly solid, quick read, horror book. It holds the suspense well and slowly unfolds itself and its monster, which helps keep the fear of it strong. Unfortunately the ending felt rushed. There were a few other oddly worded passages throughout but nothing that made it hard to read.

3.25 stars

***Publisher/Editor note: on p58/165 there is a typo in the sentence "She's not religious is any meaningful way..." and on 152/165 there is another typo in the sentence "he a chance, one chance to end this nightmare"***

Publication Date: March 10, 2023
**ARC given by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
#DarkandLonelyWater #NetGalley

Basics
genre: horror, fantasy, gore
setting: Preston & London, England
theme: female sorrow & hunger

Characters
Sam (fMC): journalist investigated a string of presumed drownings, widowed mom of twins
Marcus: Sam's uncle who raised her and lets her and her twins stay with him while she investigates
Chris: a member of the Lancashire Police dive unit

Pros
+ creature feature
+ LGBT rep: m/m, gay
+ police diving (cool to see the process, unfortunate that they must often find corpses)
+ Chekov's pond
+ the body count just keeps climbing
+ underdog investigative duo
+ when someone who was emotionally distant in the past is suddenly emotionally better in the present, it always sets my alarms ringing... are they manipulating? Is this a body snatcher?... this time it was... therapy! My jaded, cynical ass... wait! The best friend thinks it's false too! OoooOooh!
+ love when an above-board investigation just goes completely off the rails
+ THAT'S HOW YOU WRITE AN ENDING!!!

Neutral
/ man arghhh!!!! The end was phenomenal BUT the journey there was lacklustre (not enough main character work, too much description elsewhere, lack of upped tension except in the last third). Most books struggle at the end, but this one struggled with the beginning and middle.

Cons
- inattentive parenting is not my favorite thing... when your kids ask you to be around more and sleep in hungover less the answer isn't to go out drinking
- too much description, especially for one-time side characters
- I'm having a hard time connecting to any of the characters & I'm not invested in their survival.

Comp Recs
+ Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant

TW: death of a parent (past), drowning, rape (past), physical assault, kidnapping, gore

This was a fast easy read that was a dark mixing of folklore, creepiness, tension and was reminiscent of old creature feature movies.

Sam Ashlyn is a single mother raising two children. She works as a journalist and her latest assignment takes her back to her hometown to investigate recent drownings. But once her investigation begins, she quickly realizes that these are not typical drownings if they are drownings at all.

She joins forces with Chris, a disgraced police diver and they soon stumble across a decades old conspiracy to keep an ancient evil hidden. She and Chris hope to put an end to this nightmare before it puts an end to anyone else.

This one quickly grabbed my attention and held on to it until the very end. Speaking of the end, I'm still processing it.

This book was creepy and full of tension that ebbed and flowed throughout the book. That alone kept me on my toes, turning the pages. It also had a nice amount of dread in the last part of the book. I could feel the chilling atmosphere as I read. I enjoyed being a silent observer tagging along as Chris and Sam investigated, interviewed, and got closer to the truth.


3.5 stars

#DarkandLonelyWater #NetGalley #GraemeReynolds

I tried, but really couldn't get invested in the story. The writing style isn't from me and I didn't find it gripping enough.

Dark and Lonely Water is a fast-paced horror book based on folklore. By that description, I should've loved this book.
But, and I am incredibly sorry for the low rating, I could not get past the writing quality. I read it as an ARC, so sometimes a typo here and there is to be expected - but this went way overboard. There are structural issues, grammatical issues, and a complete disregard for every 'creative writing rule'. I was told a whole lot and not shown enough, the dialogue wasn't the best especially when it came to the children, and there were some mistakes that completely took me out of the story. For example, the story is set in England, from what I see the author is also based in England, so why was the temperature not in Celsius? I get that I'm probably being nitpicky, but there was just so much ruining my reading experience that every mistake was exacerbated.
I did like the premise of the book, and the plot progressed to a satisfying ending. In my opinion, this book has potential if it is completely rewritten.

I did not enjoy this one. I felt like it was super predictable and I did not like any of the characters or see any reason to route for any of them.

Dark and Lonely Water is my first time reading Graeme Reynolds. What he gives us is a fast-paced novella centered on Ginny Greenteeth, the river hag from English folklore that drowns and eats the children and elderly.

Sam, a reporter at a London rag, gets an assignment to investigate mysterious disappearances near the waterfront of Preston, her hometown that she hasn’t been back to in many years. She’s not excited about returning to the place where her mother was killed and harbors horrible memories for her, but as a single mom barely making ends meet, she doesn’t have much of a choice. It doesn’t help that her relationship with her two children is rocky, at best, and she doesn’t have childcare for them while she’s on assignment. So, she packs them up, takes them with her, and heads back to her childhood home, where they stay with her estranged Uncle Marcus. Expecting the worst, she’s pleasantly surprised that her uncle’s demeanor is much more pleasant than she remembers, and he’s looking to mend their relationship. Meanwhile, her investigation goes off the rails. More people end up dying. A police diver who came face to face with a monster in the water gets suspended from the force, and the information she gathers isn’t adding up.

Reynolds delivers a fun monster romp full of razor-sharp teeth, an ancient curse, murky underwater depths, and interesting characters with realistic dialogue. Those can all be tricky to do in novella length tales. Dark and Lonely Water is solid, but could always stand a little more fleshing out. I also wasn’t a big fan of Sam’s character. A rude, abrasive personality who had a habit of abandoning her children to go out drinking with her even more obnoxious friend makes it hard to sympathize with her. The story also had present/past tense issues that seemed to flip-flop back and forth, pulling the reader out of the story. Add this to the fact that my review copy from NetGalley had many grammatical errors. It knocked it down a notch for me. If the publisher fixes those before it goes to publication, it’ll raise the level of the story immensely. All in all, a fun story. Reynolds is a talented writer. I need to check out more of his stuff.

3.5 Bloody Duckweed out of 5

I started this book when I was in a reading slump as the cover and description drew me in.

It is such an interesting take on 'just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water'.

The story follows Sam, a journalist and single mother, as she tries to uncover the truth about disappearances and deaths in the waters near her home town. The realist aspect of the individuals in this book are incredible and the twists and turns along the way made it such a good book.

Although I wish the ending was different, I loved it all the same! Amazing book, hoping for a sequel

An entertaining story about a single mom who is a reporter, she returns to her hometown to investigate and write about some strange drownings that are happening.

I enjoyed the creature feature in this story. However, I didn't quite come to care enough about Samantha and Chris. I think this would do well if more horror was involved.

Thank you #NetGalley for #DarkandLovelyWater

I mean... I don't even know what to say. What an ending!

While Dark and Lonely Water started out rather slow and took its time picking up speed, it eventually ended up being a very atmospheric, eerie little horror book for me.
Using a figure from actually existing English folklore (yep, I asked Google), Reynolds created a creepy story of a single mother-slash-reporter who's sent back to her home town in order to investigate a series of water-related murders.
There was enough character development to make me feel and root for the protagonists, a good amount of very graphic gore, and, thankfully, a lack of info-dumping on the myth surrounding the creature. I really liked this, though I'm still a little shook by the very surprising ending.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This was a pretty fun horror. The monster was pretty cool, the characters were fine, and the story progressed decently well.

Where this one took a dive for me was the ending. I found it to be unnecessarily drawn out. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with how it ended, I just wish it happened quicker.

Overall, it's a great little horror story. If you're like me and afraid of the water, this is a great option because it's not too scary and not completely set in water.

An ancient evil lurks below the water's surface and its time is coming once again.

Sam, a widowed mother of twins, is a fledgling reporter just barely managing to scrape out a living in London. Her boss wants Sam to cover a story from her home town and despite having not been back in years, she reluctantly agrees.

With twins in tow Sam quickly starts unraveling a simple drowning story into something that seems far more sinister. With the help of Chris, a suspended police diver, they race to try to figure out what's really going on.

This book is a fast read both in how the story moves along and in page count. While the characters are written well, abit more time on them may have helped to flush them out more.

Overall this is a quick moving satisfying creature feature, born from a watery grave.

Review copy provided by NetGalley.

I had such high hopes for this book but I could get past how the characters dialog was written.

It irritated me to the point of causing me not to finish this book.

It's a good premise, but I think it lacked plausibility. I think part of the scare/horror factor is that sense of "this could maybe happen," even in paranormal instances. The monsters in this book felt a little unbelievable for me. The characters also needed more fleshing out. I wasn't particularly attached to any of them, and they lacked some dimension.

As for the book itself, there were some typos and one 2-3 page section full on repeated at about the 45% mark. All in all though, the formatting was good.

the water is a scary place to begin with and this book does a great job in being a scary story. I enjoyed what was going on and loved the concept of this story. Graeme Reynolds does a great job in the writing for this book and I loved the characters within this story. I can't wait to read more from Graeme Reynolds.

"Chris turns to face her, holding a very expensive-looking camera with a lens as long as his forearm. “I can take a crystal clear picture from a quarter of a mile away with this. Oh, and a set of binoculars for you. Trust me, I have no fucking intention of getting any closer to that thing than I have to. It got its teeth in me once; I’m not giving it another chance.”

*note for publishers- a section repeats itself around the page 71 mark*

Awesome horror/thriller short!! I stumbled upon this on Netgalley and decided to go in blind and it preceded my expectations by a huge margin! The story dives into the action quite quickly and continues to build upon it, while also building upon the characters. The writing flows, the dialogue feels so natural and the character development in so few pages is astonishing! I genuinely felt more for some of the people in this novella than I have for protagonists in 600+ word full length door-stop books.

There's thrills and chills, a little bit of mystery and a nice bit of folklore thrown in for good measure. I'll be keeping an eye out for future works of Graeme Reynold's for sure! Highly, highly recommend this one. If you enjoy horror then do yourself a favour and read this story. Huge thanks to Netgalley for my copy.

Dark and Lonely Water by Graeme Reynolds explores the legend of Jenny Greenteeth, a type of water hag that lures the unwary, old and young, to their untimely demise. We follow Sam, an investigative journalist, assigned the unwelcome task of looking into a few unexplained 'disappearances' in the area and before long she finds herself on the hunt for a monster, although, not everything is as it seems...

What I liked best about this book is the author's style or voice as it's sometimes referred. It's reminiscent of '80's horror novels and maintains a strong visual feel that could easily lend itself to film. This style is distinct and different and therefore comes as a refreshing change of pace. There's a fair amount of gore, chucked in by the bucket load, a little action towards the end, yet it still finds time to create interesting characters and dynamics. Well worth a read.

I sadly couldn't get into this book. I didn't like the style it is written. It's not a bad book just wasn't for me.