1994. In a small town where secrets sink but never disappear, a body surfaces in the river.

She looks like Penelope.

The police are quick to draw conclusions. Penelope’s boyfriend, Lee—hot-tempered, troubled, and the son of an abusive man—has violence in his blood. He nearly killed a boy once before. Now, with a dead girl in the water, history seems to be repeating itself.

Detective Ryan Hale believes the evidence points in one direction. Monsters don’t come from nowhere. And Lee’s father was one.

But Lee’s mother, Kat, knows something the rest of the town doesn’t. Twenty years ago, another girl was pulled from the same river. A tragedy ruled an accident. Another truth buried. Kat was there then—and the past she’s fought to forget is clawing its way back to the surface.

As the investigation tightens around her son, Kat must decide how far she will go to protect him. Because the deeper Detective Hale digs, the closer he gets not to Lee’s guilt…

…but to Kat’s.

Told in dual timelines—shifting between a teenage summer romance and a present-day murder investigation—A Girl in the Water is a haunting psychological thriller about love, legacy, and the lies one tells to survive.

In this town, the wrong girl is always blamed.

And the truth has been waiting twenty years to rise.