Receive Your Copy The Drowning Brought To You By J.P. Smith Available As Printable Format

just love it when a thriller totally takes me by surprise, and The Drowning drew me in straight away with its dual timeline that introduced what was to be a multilayered, irresistible mystery.
years ago, eightyearold Joey Proctor disappeared without a trace from summer camp, Some of the other boys are convinced he has fallen victim to urban legend John Otis, the evil man who is rumoured to have been behind the disappearance of several boys in these very woods.
The police, on the other hand, believe that Joey may have wandered off into the forest, perhaps distressed about his parents marital problems, Only one person knows the truth cocky swimming instructor Alex Mason, who left the boy behind on a swimming raft in the middle of the lake that afternoon to teach him a lesson and promptly forgot about him.
But Alex is not about to tell the truth and destroy his own future for the sake of a simple “mistake”, So life goes on without Joey, even though for some it will never be the same again, The other boys grow up, Alex grows older and richer, and soon the news story is replaced by other headlines, Twenty years on, Alex has all but forgotten about that long ago summer as he is basking in his success as a property developer, living in a mansion with his pretty wife and two young daughters.
Life has treated him well, Until the day things start to go wrong for him and he receives a sinister message from Joey, But Joey is dead or isnt he

J, P. Smith has taken a risk by starring a very unlikeable character as the main protagonist in his novel, but he managed to totally pull this off for me, Whilst I disliked Alex intensely not only for what he has done, but for his arrogance and lack of remorse he always maintained a small degree of humanity that made a tiny part of my heart sympathetic to his plight.
Ok, perhaps not overly sympathetic, but curious in how this would play out, Those interested in seeing karma come back to haunt the guilty will get some satisfaction out of the events that follow, And of course there is the mystery of the cold case, the missing boy, that totally hooked me,

Smith writes well, and both timelines played out seamlessly in my minds eye, I loved the constant thread of danger and suspense that overshadowed the events in both past and present, and the inclusion of the urban legend was a great touch.
There is nothing quite like a John Otis to awaken our primal fears of the monster coming in the night to take us away, Do we ever really grow out of that Everyone who has ever been on a school camp will be able to recall the goosebumps as someone told a ghost story in the night.
Then there was the butterfly effect Joeys death had on the lives he touched, ultimately spinning out of control as the timelines collide, And if that was not enough, there is that extra contemporary touch of including a filmmaker interested in Joeys story for a truecrime documentary, and a tireless detective investigating the cold case.
It now had all the elements I love in a thriller thank you very much!

The Drowning was one of those books that immediately drew me in and made me read late into the night to find out the answers.
Its not easy these days to find a thriller that stands out from the rest, but this one is so cleverly plotted that it definitely fell into that category for me.
A well constructed, compelling read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.


sitelink blog sitelink facebook sitelink instagram THE DROWNING, by J, P. Smith is a dark psychological thriller published in Januaryby Sourcebooks Landmark, is his seventh novel, but the first novel I have read by this author,

The novel opens with a group of young boys around a campfire, while the camp counsellors tell them a scary story

“One night, every seven years since Camp Waukeelo was founded in,” one of the counsellors begins, “long after lights out, a local man, John Otis, would sneak into the camp through the woods beyond the bunks and take one of the younger boys.
”

Every seven years, a boy disappears from Camp Waukeelo,
Who will be next

Twenty years ago, a little boy at camp disappeared, His name was Joey Proctor and he couldnt swim, but that didnt stop camp counsellor Alex Mason from leaving him out on a raft in the middle of the lake as a form of punishment.
Alex only meant to scare the kid, teach him a lesson, He didn't mean to forget about him, But now Joey is gone, . . and his body is never found,

Fast forward twenty years later, arrogant Alex is rich and successful, an extravagant house and married with daughters,

But no one knows what happened that summer at campor does someone know what he did

The Drowning is a wellwritten fastpaced plot with believable ruthless characters and a suspense level that keeps rising to the end.
I found the ending was a surprise but acceptable,

Highly recommended for anyone who likes psychological thrillers,

Many thanks SourceBooks Landmark via Netgalley for my digital copy,
The Drowning by author J, P. Smith is a really dark mystery with a lot of character!! I enjoyed this one, seriously the mystery is amazing in this!
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy of The Drowning in exchange for an honest review.
Joey Proctor is a little boy who is frightened terrified of the water, When Alex Mason, a young swimming instructor at summer camp, becomes frustrated with Joey he swims the boy out to a raft on a lake and leaves him there, telling him if he wants to get to shore he has to swim.
But Alex forgets about Joey until later in the day and when he goes back, the raft is deserted, And Joey is never seen again,

Thats the intriguing opening on THE DROWNING, an excellent new psychological thriller by JP Smith,

Fast forward twentyone years and Alex is now a famous and wealthy New York property developer with a string of highend hotels, Alex successfully hid his involvement in Joeys disappearance and has hardly given the boy a thought in the years since, But now a series of incidents begin that bring Joey very much into his thoughts and threaten Alex, his family, his business empire and his sanity, Is Joey still alive and has he returned to take revenge

Smith expertly cranks up the pace and tension as Alex is drawn deeper into the mystery and forced to face his past.
It makes for thrilling reading with a number of twists and turns until the surprising and satisfying ending,

Very highly recommended, I went into this book knowing very little but the plot from a highlevel perspective, There is an urban legend about a man who takes a boy from camp every seven summers like Pennywise or a thief in the night, A boy goes missing after a "teaching moment" gone horribly wrong, and a couple of decades later the counselor responsible is experiencing things that make him believe the boy is alive/has returned for

revenge.


I had hoped there would be some more time at the summer camp I LIVE for camp stories! There's always just been something about that setting that puts me in the best mental state when reading/watching thrillers and horror.
But after a couple dozen pages we are no longer at camp and are in the city with a whole new story happening,

I also felt let down by the ending yes, I semifigured out what was happening but I wanted the connection to be better and I wanted to be able to marinate with the results.
Instead it was "Here it is and now here's the last page of the book, " I just wanted a little more, Overall I did enjoy the book and it was a super quick read, . . and I will be on the lookout for more J, P. Smith! The Drowning, J. P. Smiths' seventh novel to date, is a dark and murky psychological thriller, It explores the propensity for a deep, dark secret buried long ago, and stored like all our repressed memories in the most inaccessible depths of our brain so as not to hurt us, to reappear.
Sometimes they stay buried the way you want them to, but most of the time they resurface unannounced in a spectacular fashion causing a myriad of unwanted consequences, Although Smith uses wellrecognised tropes here, he does so in a unique and refreshing way, However, there is one certainty, when the full extent of Alex's heartless, cruel to be kind, action or more correctly, omission inaction comes to light nothing will be the same again for all of those involved.


This is a solid read that has all of the component parts making it a compelling and suspenseful story, so much so that I forgot and burned my dinner as I feverishly turned the pages.
Being a law graduate the many questions surrounding the issues of culpability and negligence, as well as a the moral standpoints e, g. legal concerns v moral concerns of the plot gave me plenty of food for thought, Like most readers I expected most of my answers to be addressed towards the back end of the novel, so I indeed enjoyed the fact that Smith didn't spell everything out or tie it all up conveniently in a bow.
It'll stay with me for quite some time I suspect, So if you like questions to ponder or ruminate on this is a highly entertaining and immersive mystery thriller which poses some thoughtprovoking and intriguing questions,

Many thanks to SOURCEBOOKS Landmark for an ARC, Sometimes it's not what you DO that makes it wrong, But what you DON'T do,

Alex Mason, the swimming councilor at Camp Waukeelo, prides himself on having every camper learn to swim by the end of camp, With only five days left at camp, eight year old Joey is the only the only one who hasn't learned to swim, So Alex uses his personal approach to teach hesitant kids to swim, Force them to jump in the deep end, telling them that nature will take over and they will swim,
But Joey is deathly afraid of deep water and refuses to jump, Angry, Alex throws him in only to have to save him from drowning, As punishment, Alex takes Joey from the dock to the raft and leaves him there telling him the only way back to shore is to swim, That was atpm. Bypm, Joey is missing, After an extensive search of the woods and lake, no trace of Joey is found,

years later.
Alex Mason is a wealthy, successful, businessman with a beautiful wife and two daughters of his own, He wakes up one Saturday morning to find that someone has dyed the water in the pool red, But a bigger surprise is waiting on the bottom, When the pool is drained of the water, someone has chisled something into the bottom of the pool,
REMEMBER ME

And that is just the beginning,


sitelinkThe Drowning by sitelinkJ, P. Smith is a captivating, psychological thrill ride from beginning to end, complete with a unique storyline, detailed characters, plenty of twists, and an ending that took me completely by surprise! This has KARMA written all over it! Overall a strong and highly enjoyable novel through and through!

Thank you to NetGalley, Sourcebooks Landmark publishing, and J.
P. Smith for my Advanced Uncoreccted Digital Copy to read and review, The story starts with a group of young boys sitting around a campfire, The cam counselors are also there, telling the kids about an urban legend, A man would kidnap a child everyyears,

That should be scary enough, but reality is much more frightening, Twenty years ago a camp counselor punished a young boy by putting him on a raft in the middle of the lake, . . then promptly forgot all about him, The young boy disappeared, presumably drowned,

That brings the reader to the present, The camp counselor has made a great life for himself, . . he's wealthy, a beautiful home, a loving wife and children, But someone wants him to remember the little boy who drowned, Someone remembers the boy terror, . and wants the counselor to share in that terror today,

This is a dark psychological thriller, wellwritten, with finely drawn characters, The suspense starts on pageand doesn't let up until the very last page, The ending came as a surprise and I find myself still thinking about it,

I highly recommend THE DROWNING for anyone who likes psychological thrillers,

Many thanks to the author / SourceBooks Landmark / Netgalley for the advanced digital copy of THE DROWNING, Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own,
I wish Goodreads would let you add punctuation to your book shelf titles because I desperately need to create a "Wait, . . what" shelf.

I do not have any clue what was going on in this book, I mean I have a basic idea of what the story was supposed to be, I think I was supposed to think this was the story of a super successful real estate mogul being stalked by the boy he left to die when he was a shitty college student camp counselor twenty years before.
Then I was supposed to be very, very surprised by what was really going on the whole time, Alas, that is not what happened,

The story starts very strong and Smith is a good writer, I'll give credit where its due, The man can write a sentence and set a very spooky scene, We begin on a dark night around a campfire where little boys are being terrified by camp counselors who are regaling their charges with the story of a child killer who stalks the woods around the camp and takes a new victim every seven years.
And wouldn't you know it TONIGHT is the night he'll strike! But that's where a cheesy campfire ghost story veers into very real terror, The next day a little boy does vanish, never to be seen again,

Awesome right! I loooovveee a good revenge thriller,

As the story really begins we meet Alex, Alex was the swim instructor at the camp and the only one who knows he was indirectly responsible for the missing boy being left alone for hours, He's never told a soul what he did but now someone who clearly knows what happened has begun to torment him,

Again doesn't this sound awesome! Totally sitelinkI Know What You Did Last Summer for grownups!!!!

Unfortunately this very solid start almost immediately goes up in flames and turns into a total mess that did nothing but frustrate and confuse the crap out of me.
I actually stayed up waaayyyy past my bedtime hoping to arrive at a conclusion, ANY conclusion, that might explain the meandering mess of pointless like they mean NOTHING to the present day story flashbacks, changes in perspective, and senseless murder that surrounds possibly the most boring victim/secret bad guy I've ever read about.
Then as if that wasn't bad enough I was given literally no resolution to the one part of the story I actually cared about,

I cared nothing about Alex and thus cared even less about what happened to him, The stalker is another one of those "Oh that guy from page" reveals that straight up made me want to tear the book to shreds and then everything just kind of ends.


All I could do when I was done was say "wait, . . what"

.