Body of Water
Body of Water by Adam Godfrey brings to mind some of my favorite Stephen King short stories like The Mist, Trucks, and The Raft, as Godfrey’s characters are trapped in a diner by something in or of the water. But there are other “bottle” horror stories out there, so it’s not just this similarity that brings the King to mind.
Like King’s work, what makes Body of Water special is the characters and the community they create - as dysfunctional as it may be - as a result of the horror.
From the first pages, we are invested with Glen and Lauren, father and teenage daughter who are taking a weekend trip from their home on the Virginia coast to the Appalachian foothills, an attempt on Glen’s part to reconnect with his daughter as they have been virtual strangers lost in their own grief since Lauren’s mother died suddenly 6 years before.
As they near their destination, they make a pit stop at a diner called the Ocean Diner - a name they find funny since it’s hours from the ocean, but which didn’t surprise me at all. I grew up in the Appalachians of Virginia, and my high school’s team name was the Green Wave with an anthropomorphic wave as the mascot. Mountain folk love irony. But I digress.
Within minutes, two men - one of them wielding a gun - burst in and lock the doors, saying no one is leaving. But this isn’t a robbery. They are running from something in the water they saw taking people, and they aren’t going to risk letting it in by allowing anyone to leave.
Thus begins the rapid (digital) page-turning as the people trapped in the diner begin to realize the danger really isn’t (at least not entirely) from the gun-toting Hank, that there really is something in the water.
With relatable characters and an interesting biological terror, Body of Water is a tense, emotional survival horror with a satisfying, unexpected conclusion.
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the advance copy for my honest review. Pub. date: 9/23/25
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