Hello Beautiful People!! For this review, I get into The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding. The Drowning Woman is the second book by Robyn Harding that I’ve checked out. I read The Arrangement by her a few years ago and I can’t say that I totally remember it but when I read this book I was reminded why I should check out more of her books.
Main Characters:
- Lee: A restaurer who lost her business during COVID-19, after borrowing money from the wrong people and becoming homeless she goes on the run where she meets Hazel
- Jessie: Lee’s boyfriend who she meets when working at a dinner that pays her under the table
- Hazel: A woman in a horrifically abusive relationship who is cheating on her husband when she meets Lee who is sleeping in her car by Hazel’s home, when Lee comes into her life she and her boyfriend create a plan to get her out of her marriage
- Benjamin: Hazel’s abusive husband who also happens to be a criminal defense attorney
My Review
I won’t be getting into any spoilers in this review because this book is still fairly new, and it was very good so I would definitely recommend picking this one up and giving this crazy read a look for yourself.
The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding is a wild and twisty story that definitely shocked me with its interesting peaks and character dynamics. I had such a hard time putting this one down because I was terribly curious to know how it ended. I gave the book an 8.5/10 rating.
The book switches between the perspectives of Lee and Hazel. For the first bit of the book the two are unconnected but when Lee who has had to take to sleeping in her car to save money saves Hazel from drowning one morning the two become tethered together. What Lee doesn’t know when she runs out to save her that morning is that Hazel doesn’t want to be saved. Once Hazel tells her story to Lee, Lee knows that she has to help her in more ways than she just has. Hazel’s marriage is one that made my spine crawl. She is quite literally her husband’s slave and his abuse knows no bounds when it comes to controlling his wife. I really enjoyed the very apparent differences but also the similarities between the two characters. Hazel is wealthy but extremely unhappy and Lee is poor and extremely unhappy. Both have a desire to create new lives for themselves free from control. The only difference is that Lee is doing it but it’s costing her everything, and Hazel isn’t free yet but is willing to give everything up to do so.
I was a little on the fence with the book when it started because Lee’s story originally seemed a bit weird to me, but it becomes clear as it goes on that her story isn’t the strangest. In her past life, Lee was very successful. When the pandemic hit her restaurant was struggling to survive and she took money from the wrong people. When she couldn’t pay it back, and her family turned against her, she had no choice but to try to run away from her life. The whole scary loan shark thing was a bit of an eye roll to me but I guess things like these do actually happen, it just always seems a bit weird to me. Nonetheless, her story really couldn’t beat Hazels when it comes to the crazy and weird.
I always think the plot of two characters with different lives finding common ground is always an interesting one. It plays a lot into the character’s insecurities which is definitely what happens here. It becomes clear early on that both Hazel and Lee not only struggle to be honest with each other but also with themselves. Hazel while defiantly having a lot to complain about when it comes to her marriage, but plays the victim on things that are very much her fault and hers alone. Lee on the other hand hides from her own issues by getting over-involved in other people, often causing her to ignore the red flags in front of her. Both are desperate to escape the confines of the men in their lives, but at the same time aren’t really honest with themselves as to why they let these men control them. I think overall this book is just really clever, there’s a lot to decipher under what the characters are saying, and what the others aren’t picking up on. I enjoyed that at most events we get both Hazel and Lee’s perspectives. It made things really interesting because it left it to the reader to pull at the differences between what the two are seeing and thinking.
Despite the hardships of the ladies in the book, I can’t say that it exactly makes them super likable characters. As a homeless woman, Lee is extremely judgemental and often gives off this sense that she sees herself as better than the other homeless people. When she meets Hazel part of me wonders if she took such a liking to her because Hazel was living the lifestyle that she felt she deserved. Despite her fear of the men she owes money to, she doesn’t have a lot of problem getting with this random man who just happened to show a lot of interest in her one day. Don’t get me wrong her relationship with her boyfriend Jessie was fine but she kind of made me roll my eyes a lot with how warry she could be of some, and then extremely naive of others. Hazel on the other hand while knowing what it’s like to be treated terribly by someone, doesn’t have enough hesitation towards hurting others. I was a bit surprised by some of the choices she made in the book, and at first, I really struggled to like her but started to like her more as the book went on. I didn’t love the way she treated Lee like a stray dog and almost saw her as something to distract herself from the hell of her home life. I appreciated that Lee at least was willing to be a bit more critical of her choices than Hazel was. There were some things that Hazel would do that would just annoy me. Her choices weren’t even ones that were really excusable for the things going on in her life. Hazel would just think critically a little too late whereas Lee at least could catch onto things a bit earlier.
Despite the issues with Lee and Hazel you couldn’t help but root for them throughout the book. I just wanted them to escape the chains of the men that controlled them and to find happiness. With the themes of homelessness and domestic violence, it was easy to want to see good things happen for the two of them. I found the ending of the book to flow well with what the rest of the book set up. Sometimes book take a wild turn at the ending, but I felt like this one worked well with how the book was going.
Overall a super great read that definitely keeps you guessing from start to finish. If you’re in the mood for a dark, but also light at times thriller that has two hurt women at the center of it with a lot of secrets, I would definitely recommend checking this one out.
Have you checked out The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding or any of her other works before? What did you think?
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