Book Review: They Come From the Water by Wendy Dalrymple

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“It doesn’t seem too bad at first, but the closer you look, the more obvious it is that this place is rotten.”

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After a grisly murder/suicide that results in the deaths of their grandparents and mother, estranged siblings Summer and Joy reunite to clean out and sell their grandparents’ Central Florida-based bungalow. Having visited the Palmetto Lake-adjacent home only once as a teen, Summer is determined to dispatch the rotting, bygone relic as quickly as possible — a laborious process complicated by the punishing June heat, gruesome crime scene cleanup, and Joy’s insatiable need for answers. Who were their grandmother and grandfather, and why did their mother butcher them and then kill herself?

As they embark upon their grim task, the sisters’ fraught relationship and personal struggles immediately resurface, as do members of the idyllic lakeside community, one of whom played a significant role in Summer’s teenage visit. And when Summer begins experiencing ominous and inexplicable things and the sisters find strange items hidden within the house, the macabre mystery swiftly escalates into dangerous territory where dark family secrets may be more sinister, bizarre, and appalling than either could have imagined.

A twisty and atmospheric Southern/Florida Gothic that explores the horrors of inherited trauma, They Come From the Water packs an amazing amount of history and intrigue into 160 pages. These elements, capped off by an absolutely horrific and haunting close, make for a creative, harrowing, binge-worthy, and truly memorable novella — this reader’s first experience with Wendy Dalrymple’s work, and definitely not the last!

❤Amanda

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