Thank you Sourcebooks Landmark, #partner, for the advanced copy of Body of Water in exchange for my honest review. I got the audiobook via one of my audio subscriptions.
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Published: September 23, 2025
Summary:
For fans of Stephen King’s The Mist and the HBO hit show The Last of Us comes a wildly inventive, sinister thriller following an estranged father and daughter who find themselves trapped in a diner by a living body of water.
Don’t let the water drag you down…
It’s been six years since Glen Masters lost his wife in a tragic accident. In hopes of reconnecting with his grieving teenage daughter, Lauren, he decides to take her on a road trip through the Appalachian mountains, where he has fond memories of their past as a family. But what was supposed to be a quick diner pit stop suddenly transforms into a nightmare when armed men stumble in, ranting about a mysterious and deadly “living water” that attacked several people up the road. The story the men spin seems to be the rantings of drunken lunatics, but soon Glen, his daughter, and the other diners find themselves hostages to both the gunmen and the inexplicably terrifying entity.
Because there’s truly something wrong with the water, and it has no mercy.
Panic grows as the diners play witness to a nature-defying being that seeks only to swallow everything in its path. With help nowhere in sight, the group of strangers must work together to devise an escape, and ultimately, Glen will have to face his worst fears to reconcile with the past or risk losing everything.
A chilling story from a brand-new voice in fiction, Body of Water explores the complicated nature of grief, terror, and the ghosts we must confront to survive.
My thoughts:
After seeing so many friends rave about this one, I had to move this one up on my to-read pile and boy am I glad I did! What a fantastic book!
As I’ve stated a few times, I’m still relatively new to the horror genre and finding what works for me within this genre, but one thing I have absolutely come to love is the subgenre of grief horror and Godfrey does an amazing job tackling it within this book. You may have heard some rumblings about the ending of this book and how divisive it is — people either love it or hate it. I think that’s what makes this book so strong and while I definitely did not see it coming and had to take a moment to process it, I cannot even think of another way for this book to go.
This book is creepy and it’s intense. It gets under your skin for sure. But I loved that while it definitely is a horror novel, it also has such an emotional feel to it. There is heartbreak, there is family drama, and of course there is some action, too. It’s a thought-provoking book that proves that sometimes the things that scare us aren’t always physical…and horror books aren’t always scary reads.
Audio thoughts:
This was so good on audio, narrated by Jason Babson, a new-to-me narrator. I was completely captivated by this story, in part due to the way Babson voiced the characters and his pacing — all done just right!
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