I can now say I have read a literary thriller, but I can also say it just wasn't for me in the end. I was very interested in the lies and truths that plagued the storyteller, but the detail put into The Waters & The Wild left me feeling overwhelmed far too often. I skimmed, a lot more than I'd like to admit, and I really only stuck it out with this book to learn about what happened to the girl. The poetry aspect was phenomenal, it is clear that DeSales Harrison knows his poetry (I would hope so with his profession), but the constant circling back to it felt superfluous. The Waters & The Wild is an incredibly well written literary novel, maybe almost too well written in my opinion. It's filled with beautiful words and a storyline that actually could be very engaging, but ultimately is difficult to connect with. ( )

This is the second chance that I gave to this book. It did not get any better the second time around. There was nothing about the story or characters that peaked my interest and kept me intrigued. Although, with the second time I did get the concept better. However, the story read more flowy and so harder to pin down. After "attempting" to read several chapters, I finally ended up skimming the majority of the rest of the book. This book did not do anything for me. ( )

This is a slow burning mystery dealing with the death of a doctor’s patient, mysterious letters and packages and one’s former life in Paris. Daniel Abend, a single parent to Clementine and a successful psychoanalyst in NYC receives a package regarding one of his patients who died. In his own written confession, he goes on to explain his life, his daughter, his patient and so much more. As the story progresses so does the mystery. It was well written and sometimes confusing. But even after a few days of finishing the novel, I‘m not sure of what to make of it. I guess then it didn’t satisfy the reader in me. ( )

A patient, a poem, a death, a post office box, and Father Spurlock. What do all of these have to do with Dr. Daniel Abend and his patient, Jessica Burke? Father Spurlock wants to know too.

Jessica had been a patient of Daniel’s, committed suicide, and with careful planning somehow had mailed letters to Daniel after her death and then three years later.

The puzzling thing was how that letter could have been mailed by Jessica when she had been dead for three years? Another thing that confused Daniel is that from these papers, he now knew that everything in the investigation was not revealed or seen by the police.

Daniel continued to receive letters about the death. These papers also brought back memories of what happened long ago in Paris.

When Daniel’s daughter, Clementine, disappears after she finds something about long-ago Paris, and then shows up at Father Spurlock’s telling him that her father mailed him something, Father Spurlock became more confused because he had received nothing.

Then all of a sudden letters and clues begin showing up, and Father Spurlock was extremely bothered by them because his only connection to Jessica Burke was when he did the service for her funeral, and he had no idea why he would be involved in whatever was going on. He is also bothered because Daniel was the one directing all this correspondence to him, telling Father Spurlock the story, and putting the responsibility on him.

THE WATERS & THE WILD has a gorgeous cover that rivals with the gothic, troubled, complicated story inside.

THE WATERS & THE WILD has beautiful writing - detailed and elegant. The author's style itself seems like a poem.

There are a lot of powerful and sometimes very deep, thought-provoking passages. I would call this book very scholarly in the writing aspect.

I enjoyed the book because of the writing and the SLOW march to the revelations. It did drag on a bit at times along with confusion, but all in all it turned out to have a very interesting, brilliant ending.

THE WATERS & THE WILD is a story of love, regret, revenge, and secrets.

If you like slow, steady, odd, and addictive, you will like this book. 4/5

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review. ( )

The Waters & The Wild is a book I would recommend only to those with strong literary leanings, and a particular interest in (or at least, patience for) psychological theory, theology and introspection. That is not to say this novel’s billing as a literary thriller is incorrect… It is simply that readers must traverse hundreds of pages of highly literary terrain before the thriller element really takes hold. It really needn’t have been that challenging. Yet the right reader, one that gives conscientious focus to the myriad tangents and imagery laid before them, will often find that ‘highly literary terrain’ profound; and dare I say it, in places majestic. Read full review >> ( )