Early last week, I found Water Under The Bridge by Britney King on Kindle Unlimited and decided to give it a shot. Now I’m just glad that I didn’t actually pay for this book.
Long story short, I hated this book.
Though I didn’t realize this when I first got this book, Water Under The Bridge is the first in King’s Water trilogy. Had I known that before, I wouldn’t have even given this book a chance; as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not looking for a long-term commitment when I’m picking a new book to read. I like for the story to end when the book is over, and I feel that many authors really milk the series thing as a way of providing themselves with job security, but that’s a whole other topic that I won’t get into in this post…
Water Under The Bridge is a suspense/ crime thriller about Kate and Jude, a couple with a long criminal background and, to say the least, a pretty fucked up moral compass. I think there was definitely potential for this book to be a good one, but the execution of the story just wasn’t what it could have been. If I had to sum up this book in one word only, that word would be “underwhelming.”
Keeping in line with the latest writing fad, King’s chapters alternate between Kate and Jude’s point-of-view. As cliche as this writing style is becoming, I would’ve been fine with the flip-flopping points of view, but it takes a truly talented writer to pull of this technique, and I don’t think King is quite there yet; Jude and Kate narrate with essentially the same voice, which I believe is due to a lack of character development on the author’s part. Not only that, but each character is also narrating as if he/ she is speaking to the other character, which I found a little bit corny.
The story starts out with Jude and Kate in court-ordered marriage counseling, after Kate has filed for divorce. From there, Jude and Kate alternate narrating the story of their relationship up until this point. We quickly learn that Kate and Jude are sociopathic killers, and I think this is a key reason why the overall story is so anti-climactic; when the entire novel is action packed and filled with violence, then there needs to be a large plot twist or some other turning point to really get the reader’s attention, and that’s exactly what this book is lacking.
I suspect that King is saving the “twist” for one of the later books in the trilogy, but unfortunately for her, I’m giving up after book 1. That being said, please comment below if you’ve made it past Water Under the Bridge in the Water trilogy, and tell me if it gets any better!
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