“Creepy and sexy in equal measure, The Water Cure is a hypnotic portrait of three young women waking up to the world, desire, and the power of their bodies.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
The water cure is an arousing, hypnotic and disturbing book, mainly told from the perspective of one of three sisters (Lia) living on an isolated and desolate island with their insulated and controllingly loving mother and periodically with their protector- their father.
Tested from a young age, preparing for the worst case possible the three sisters, Lia, Grace and Sky, suffer through extreme and painful tests. However, one day the only thing they have been trained and protected against for the entirety of their life appears outside where they live, they must use everything they have ever been taught and know to defend themselves from the most dangerous thing that ever walked towards them and would transform their life forever. Men.
With their strongest protector gone they are left with their mother. Questioning everything the three sisters have ever been taught by their parents about these savage and murderous creatures, they try to distinguish the truth and the lies taught by their parents with three men washed up, Llew, Gwil and James. With their mum in control she instantly sets rules to be strictly followed and is extremely protective. However, when the girls wake one morning, they find their mum missing and are told by the men that she has set out on a boat to mainland to collect resources due to food shortages. However, she will never return.
With the sisters left with the three young men, they keep control by sharing strength and watching the men closely. With their dad supposedly an exception to these callous beings of men, they try to understand if the men washed up are possibly too as they build close relationships in order to survive. One of the sister Lia builds a very close relationship with Llew and having never experienced something as beautiful as this she blindly falls in love blocking out what her mother taught her.
Little do the sisters know the men are hiding a riveting and devastating secret that will drastically affect them all. At first, the sisters dispute everything their mum indoctrinated into them, however, later on they find the truth and lies in everything they has ever been told. With a clear experience the girls must do what is necessary to survive against the men and when James tells Grace something absolutely horrifying, they must only think of their sisters and survival as taught by their mother. Even if that means killing the only thing they have ever loved.
Reviewed by:
Mia Savage, aged 15
Added 9th May 2019
