A Breath After Drowning

In A Breath After Drowning, Kate Wolfe’s sister was murdered sixteen years ago, and the supposed killer was convicted and about to be executed for his crime. Kate is now a successful psychiatrist treating mentally unstable children. The same week her sister’s killer is to be executed, her current patient commits suicide. This death opens old wounds, as does meeting a retired detective obsessed with her sister’s case and positive it was the work of a serial killer, not the man on death row. Kate has to decide if she’s willing to pursue this lead and find out the truth of what happened to her little sister all those years ago or if some things are just better left buried.

I don’t have a lot of feelings either way about this book. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the plot or characters, but there’s nothing really outstanding either. It was fairly predictable, both in who the killer really was and how it all played out. I didn’t find Kate to be a very relatable character, but I also didn’t dislike her. With Kate being a psychiatrist and everything, it seemed like she should have had way more insight into the killer and his motivations. He hardly had a role at all, with everything being explained in just a couple of pages. More time was spent on things that didn’t seem to matter. I didn’t find that to be charming, as in the author is building suspense. It made the book more frustrating for me.

Despite my feelings about this book, I do think readers who enjoy Ruth Ware and Megan Miranda will enjoy this book. It has a similar feel to their styles of writing as well as similar kinds of storylines.