Review: The Blue Hour - Paula Hawkins

Review: The Blue Hour - Paula Hawkins - October 2024

There's something deeply unsettling about isolation - the kind that comes with living on an island cut off from the mainland for half of every day. Paula Hawkins understands this instinctively, and in The Blue Hour, she's crafted a novel that exists in contradictions, much like the tidal island of Eris itself.

This book was a weird one for me. It moved with the patience of a slow tide, each page deliberate and atmospheric, yet somehow I found myself racing through it. Perhaps it's because Hawkins creates such exquisite tension that even stillness feels urgent. The narrative operates in that liminal space between contemporary fiction and historical mystery . Grace lives on Eris now, solitary and content among the tides, but the island is haunted by the ghost of Vanessa, the famous artist who once called it home, and by her husband who vanished twenty years ago under mysterious circumstances.

The premise is deceptively simple: one island, one house, one woman. Unreachable for twelve hours each day when the tide rises. It's a setup that could feel claustrophobic, but Paula Hawkins uses it to create something breathtaking instead. When a discovery in a London art gallery sends a visitor to Eris, the island's carefully buried secrets begin clawing their way to the surface.

What struck me most was how Paula Hawkins captures the peculiar comfort of chosen isolation while simultaneously revealing its dangers. Grace is a creature of routine, shaped by the rhythms of the sea, and there's something almost enviable about her self-contained world until that world begins to crack open. The book explores how we curate our solitude, what we're running from, and what happens when the past refuses to stay submerged.

The writing has a hushed, hypnotic quality that recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith. Hawkins doesn't rush her revelations; she lets them emerge like objects revealed by receding water. It's unsettling in the best possible way , that creeping dread that makes you keep reading even as you're not quite sure you want to know what's coming.

The Blue Hour won't be for everyone. If you need constant action, you'll find it frustratingly slow. But if you appreciate atmosphere, nuanced character work, and prose that feels like watching storm clouds gather over dark water, this is absolutely worth your time. Paula Hawkins has delivered something genuinely unusual here , a book that feels both contemporary and timeless, quick and slow, intimate and vast.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3XHcKyS