
Deep Like The River by Tim Waggoner
The artwork for this book is by Daniele Serra. That is always going to be a good start. There is an impressionist feel to his work that seems to add hidden depths to already creepy images. This cover shouldn’t seem all that creepy to be honest. After all it is just a woman in a canoe right? There is something there. Something I can’t quite see. Something bad. A perfect start for a horror story.
Most of the way through this book I thought I knew what the ending was going to be. I thought it was going to be rather predictable and not very imaginative. I felt that until the very end where somehow it manages to end in a much better way than I’d imagined and without a clunky twist. I do love it when that happens.
This is a simple yet powerful story that plumbs the depths of denial and regret at the heart of the mourning process. At points I was disgusted by the main character Alie but throughout the story I pitied her and wanted her to find some kind of peace.
At around eighty pages it is a nice length for a story like this. This will certainly not be the last book I read by Tim Waggoner.