Drowning Instinct Review

TITLE Drowning Instinct
AUTHOR Ilsa J. Bick
PUBLICATION February 1, 2012 by Lerner Publishing Group
READ June 23 - 24, 2012

There are stories where the girl gets her prince, and they live happily ever after. (This is not one of those stories.)

Jenna Lord’s first sixteen years were not exactly a fairytale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother—until he shipped off to Afghanistan. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire.

There are stories where the monster gets the girl, and we all shed tears for his innocent victim. (This is not one of those stories either.)

Mitch Anderson is many things: A dedicated teacher and coach. A caring husband. A man with a certain... magnetism.

And there are stories where it’s hard to be sure who’s a prince and who’s a monster, who is a victim and who should live happily ever after. (These are the most interesting stories of all.)

Drowning Instinct is a novel of pain, deception, desperation, and love against the odds—and the rules.

"..this is a fairy tale with teeth and claws, and here's what completely sucks: you're going to want black and white, right and wrong, I'm not sure I can give that to you.  That's the problem with the truth."

 

I finished this book about an hour ago and since then I have been sitting here staring at a blank document on my computer.  I have no idea what to say about this novel other than it is a masterfully crafted, haunting tale that you will not be able to put down.  Every page of Drowning Instinct feels like the calm before the storm.  The novel starts off with our MC Jenna Lord being handed a personal tape recorder by detective Pendleton as she lies soaking wet in a hospital bed.  He tells her that he needs to know what happened, he needs the whole story, from beginning to end and tells her to relay it in her own time and he will pick up the tape.

I don't want to go into too much in this review because this is another one that I think you should read without knowing too much about it.  Every character in this novel is a villain in their own way, they are all flawed and their motives are always a bit of a mystery.  I will say that I connected with Jenna, she had a very dry sense of humor and she was brutally honest (I think...) I wanted to laugh out loud with her at times, I wanted to hug her at times and I wanted to reach out and shake her at times, you will feel a vast array of emotions as you read through her story. Jenna's story is depressing, she comes from a broken home, she has an absent, cheating father and a mother who numbs her pain with a bottle of Stoli.  She finds solace in Mr. Anderson, a teacher at her new school who takes an intense interest in her well being.

Mitch Anderson is a caring teacher who has a tendency to want to "fix" people, he gravitates to broken girls and attempts to put the pieces of their life back together. As Jenna says in the quote I used nothing is black and white and the lines between right and wrong are often blurred when it comes to Mitch (and many other relationships in the story.) The most fascinating part of Drowning Instinct is that it will be interpreted by everyone differently, Ilsa gives us just enough information o get our minds working.

In the end what was I feeling? Well, I still don't really know.  I have so many questions running through my head and there is so much I still want to know. But I'm happy that I don't have all the answers because I know that I will think about Drowning Instinct for a long time to come.  Ilsa J. Bick is an author that I will be looking for in the future and I will be picking up her past work as soon as possible.

P.S. Could I possibly have been more vague in this review? No, probably not. But I went into this virtually blind and I think that's how it should be read.