Sonja Wolter's Book Review: Weeping Water by J.T. Ruby

“Not every second chance is a gift.”

This is the tag line that caught my attention when I first picked up this book by local Orangeville author J.T. Ruby. Weeping Water is a fast paced thriller that journeys into a world where reanimation of the dead becomes a reality.

The summary promises the story of Anastasia Ripley and her journey to reconnect with a world that she parted from some fifty years earlier. However, I found that the real story was in the journey of Elliot Asher, a savvy bank account manager, who finds himself on the same journey shortly after securing a deal with CryoCore, an experimental cryonics program that preserves the dead in liquid nitrogen.

I really enjoyed the characters of Elliot and his fiancée, Cacy Philips. Their relationship before and after the cataclysmic events was loving and real. J.T. Ruby did a fantastic job with these characters and their story. When we do meet Anastasia “Annie” again, she is almost a secondary character in the novel, but I do like the way she and Elliot connect in a synchronistic twist of fate.   

Where the story starts lagging for me is near the end of the book, after Annie meets a kindly couple who are willing to help her situation. After being fully introduced to the couple, they are quickly removed and replaced with a number of other characters that have no purpose in the resolution of the story. There is even one character who seems to have his own short story.

I was hoping for good sense to prevail when Annie finally meets up with Elliot again, but there was a dangerously childish act of “revenge” that left me groaning. None the less, I would have been okay with it if there had been a clear resolution and after story. There wasn’t.  That left me a bit disappointed. There was definitely the possibility of wrapping up the story to some conclusion, but I felt I was left hanging at the end.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. I kept turning the page to see what was going to happen next and that’s certainly the sign of an excellent story. There are a few grammatical and factual blips peppered throughout the book that a good proof reader might have been able to pick up, but they are worth ignoring for the excellent writing that is present for most of the novel.

A great first novel for J.T. Ruby. I look forward to seeing more from this author.