Kunzru showcasing his trademark exhilarating prose throughout … closing with a conclusion that packs a real punch”. The Independent’s Lucy Scholes admired “genuinely and viscerally disturbing scenes. “Captivating … a ghost story about race and music … witty, strange and often very moving,” wrote Jon Day in the Financial Times about this story of cultural appropriation, in which two young white men fake a record by an old black bluesman. Hari Kunzru’s novel White Tears was less divisive.

Hawkins does not quite pass the second-book test.” She is let down by her overambitious structure and a lack of sufficient tension. For that Hawkins ought to be commended, even if the result is not a full success. “It does not follow the usual samey fashionable pattern of ‘domestic noir’ and psychological thrillers. Marcel Berlins in the Times also found ambition – too much of it: “This novel has its intriguing attributes,” he wrote. The Evening Standard’s Katie Law declared it “altogether more ambitious than TGOTT, with a much bigger cast of characters, a historical element – witches – and not just your basic twist but a continuum of twists that, well, keep on twisting …”. The Independent’s Sally Newall was “semi-gripped”, but “got to the end and found it hard to care about the final reveal, mostly because it’s hard to keep track of and emotionally invest in the myriad of characters … A good beach read, yes, but one that you may have forgotten by the time you’ve come back from your next dip in the sea.” The New Statesman’s Leo Robson was one of several critics to identify “signs of growth and greater ambition”, concluding that “ Into the Water is on a par with The Girl on the Train – and of a piece with it, too”.

A fter the stratospheric success of The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins faces that difficult next novel test with her new book about a drowned woman, Into the Water.

Paula hawkins into the water review