I was unaware when I began this book that it was actually the fifth book in an ongoing series but thankfully for me it reads just fine as a standalone novel, but saying that I really want to go and read the first four books now just to check and because this one was so good!

A young woman is found beaten and left for dead on the banks of the river, with no memory of what had happened to her and even worse, no memory of who she even is leads Detectives Adrian Miles and Imogen Grey into an investigation they will never forget.

Set in Exeter in Devon which is where I live really helped connect with this book and it isn’t somewhere that comes up very often so for that reason alone it will stand out in my memory but as well as that some of the subject matter in this will also make it stand out form the crowd for its own reasons. To say it made for some uncomfortable reading would be putting it politely but it was done with compassion and understanding without being sensationalised. You will understand once you read it but I don’t want to say for fear of taking away the twist and shock from future readers!

It is one of those books that is quite tricky to review without spoilers, there is not a huge amount of dead bodies or gore but there is a huge amount of intrigue and depth to the story. It is fast paced and will keep you glued from the first page to the very last as well as you crying out for the next book in the series, I know I certainly am!

Shocks and a twist that will spin your head, this is one book you really must read to believe!

Woman in the Water will be published on 11 November 2019 and is available for preorder now.
A big thank you to the author Katerina Diamond, publishers Avon Books UK and NetGalley for my advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest and independent review. ( )

Woman in the Water by Katerina Diamond is the sixth entry in the DS Imogen Grey series but can easily be read as a standalone. DS Adrian Miles is called to the scene of a crime: a woman, barely alive, has been beaten within an inch of her life and left semi-submerged in the river shallows. His partner, DS Imogen Grey, joins him at the hospital where the mystery woman has been taken. The woman soon disappears, leaving the detectives without a clue as to who she is, who did this to her and where she is running to. Their investigation leads them to the home of the Corrigans. It becomes clear that Mr. Corrigan’s entourage live in fear of the man and injuries and missing persons are not uncommon. This mystery is well-written and often surprises the reader with unexpected details and events throughout, including a very surprising ending. I highly recommend this original police procedural. Thank you to Avon Books UK and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Wowee, I think this is the best of the Grey and Miles books I have read so far. I also just need to say this: Ms Diamond, how could you?!

The story opens with DS Adrian Miles rescuing a woman from an icy river. It seems she must be dead but amazingly she has survived. He feels really strongly about the woman as it seems like she has been a victim of some kind of violence and having grown up in an abusive household he is determined not to watch it happen to someone else.

Along with his partner, DS Imogen Grey, they start trying to find out who the woman is and how she ended up in the river. Not easy to begin with but as they start digging a story unfolds. That story follows a fairly standard path but with some deviations that made this a really rather chilling story. I'd already gleaned from other reviews that maybe something quite shocking was going to happen and it certainly does but it wasn't what I was expecting at all. I was horrified by this turn of events, more so I think because I had followed these characters across several books, but I thought the author dealt with it very well and very sympathetically.

Anyway, enough of that because I am definitely not going to spoil it for future readers. I found Woman in the Water to be absolutely gripping. The plot itself is disturbing and dark and there's also the evolving relationship between Imogen and Adrian running alongside it. I like them both so much and I do hope that we'll see more from them in the future. Katerina Diamond is a brilliant writer, constructing twisty crime thrillers with characters you can't help but care about. This is one of only a couple of police procedural series I look forward to reading and this instalment had me completely absorbed. ( )

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

While waiting to see if I was approved for an ARC I borrowed the first in the series from the library, but quit after a few chapters. I then hoped I would get turned down for the ARC, but here we are...

I am also quitting this one (at 23%). This time I felt the plot did get moving fairly promptly, although there were plenty of repetitious paragraphs about Imogen and Adrian's decision to keep their relationship secret. I just can't keep going though: the writing is off somehow (people just don't talk like that), I find Imogen's constant musings about Adrian juvenile, and when a witness stabbed himself in front of them I was done. ( )