Review: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this via netgalley, however I opted to listen to the finished version of the audiobook. All opinions are my own.

I thoroughly enjoyed The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but this kind of fell flat for me. I think what didn't work was the length and repetitiveness of the book. The concept and mystery part was fine, it just took far too long to get to it. The information about the "devil" aka Old Tom was repeated several times throughout without revealing anything new, we are also reminding multiple times how cruel and violent the Governor General is to his wife. The pacing was very slow, and for a book over 400 pages (the audio is just over 17 hours) you need a fast paced, action packed story to keep you turning the pages. I didn't find that to be the case here. I think there were too many characters to keep track of, I think this was to keep you guessing as to who the culprit was, but I ultimately lost track of who was who other than Arent and Sara. I also quickly lost track of what was happening with the plot. Evelyn Hardcastle was a fairly long book but it kept me turning the pages to find out what was going on.

I will say that the reveal at the end was good. The concept of Old Tom and the Eighth Landten kept me interested and I kept reading to find out what was really going on. I will say Turton gives you just enough spooky events to keep you wondering if something paranormal is going on during this sea voyage and just enough information to make you speculate about what is really going on.

Overall, I think this had a very interesting concept, but for me it was far to long and slow paced for my taste. There seem to be fairly polarized reviews of this book, so take this review with a grain of salt. Many people loved this book, but I found it lacking the suspenseful feel I need to stay interested in a mystery.

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