Two best girlfriends were travelling by car from their Southern college to a small town in Minnesota. Caroline Price had generously volunteered to drive Audrey Sutter seven hundred miles to visit her father, Retired Sheriff Tom Sutter. Sheriff Sutter had inoperable lung cancer. A late night gas station stop in Iowa, near the Minnesota border, on a raw snowy night, turned deadly leaving Caroline missing and Audrey barely alive.

The gas station, approximately two deserted miles from the highway looked desolate. Two vehicles were parked near the ladies restroom, one being a two-tone truck. A bathroom pit stop...Audrey was accosted...Caroline pepper sprayed the young men...then...Audrey and Caroline stumbled to Caroline's RAV4 and attempted to drive away. As they approached an icy trestle bridge, the car was rear ended and plunged, nose first, into the Black Root River. Audrey woke up in the hospital, Caroline was presumed dead. Who would do such a thing?

Gordon Burke used to co-own Burke-Young Plumbing and Supply. A decade ago, his sixteen year old daughter, Holly was found dead in the Black Root River. A car accident...but...when still alive, she was pushed or had fallen into the river. Why did Danny Young skip work that day to go hunting? Danny seemed to be the prime suspect. No case...lack of witnesses or evidence. Immeasurable grief and loss. Sheriff Sutter never found Holly Burke's killer. Gordon Burke wondered, "What would he do for himself that he didn't do for me?' There is no longer Burke- Young Plumbing and Supply. Rachel Young, the onetime suspect's mother, is somewhat comforted by the presence of Danny's old dog, left behind by Danny. Waging an uphill battle, Audrey is determined to fight back in memory of Caroline and to jump start her stalled life journey.

"The Current" by Tim Johnston is an atmospheric, psychological, emotionally packed novel. The mysterious, unsolved drownings in Black Root River were difficult to fathom, culpability difficult to unmask. Author Johnston very successfully created numerous twists and turns to mislead and pique the reader's interest. Highly recommended!

Thank you Algonquin Books and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Current".

Reading this novel was a bit like being swept away on a rapid current. You get the close calls, the moments to take a breath and reflect, then pulled back under gasping for air. Fast moving novel. This isn't a Who Done It novel. It's a novel where you realize just how many people could have done it and not done it but been falsely accused of doing it. What timing for the #MeToo movement.

Johnson does a great job with creating believable characters. One scene in particular still feels off to me: Without giving away spoiler alerts, I'll be vague. I don't think many young mothers in the house alone, giving a young child a bath, would open the door to stranger, even a young woman, and ask this person who looks nineteen (even if it was the person on the news for surviving the crash) to grab the bottle of wine and bring it to the bathroom so they could sip wine and chat while bathing the child.

The ending left me in limbo, but I feel like my life is in a perpetual state of limbo right now, so I deserve that ending. Would I really want a happy ending, a dramatic ending, an ending that wraps up everything neatly after riding the current with the low and high tides of this novel? Might as well stay in muddied waters remembering how not everything has a right or wrong answer, a clear cut verdict, and justice isn't always served appropriately.

I was granted access by netgalley.com to an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book was hooked my in the first few pages, and I had a tough time putting it down! Intriguing and suspenseful, I'll recommend to all lovers of psychological thrillers!

Sorry, this one was just but for me. I felt like I was in a state of confusion throughout. It was hard track of what exactly was happening. A lot felt like a dream.

When two young women leave their college campus, they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives in the What happens to these girls will affect the future of many people in their small town. Does history repeat itself? What happened ten years earlier? Is the killer still among them? Who is safe?.

I couldn't get into this. I loved Descent but this one feel flat. The alternating viewpoints were a little confusing.

I liked Descent better. This was good and held my attention. Tim Johnston is very talented and knows how to make us care about his characters. I recommend for sure- but if you haven't read Descent, you simply must.

I’ll admit I had a hard time getting into this novel- It’s told in alternating viewpoints, and at first I wasn’t able to keep everyone straight and establish what felt like a relationship with the characters. But I really liked Descent, the author’s previous book, so I stuck with it. In retrospect, part of the issue may have been the formatting of the e-ARC I was reading, which probably made it harder to even tell when narrators switched from one to the other. In any case, everything worked itself out. The Current tells the story of a tragedy in a river’s icy waters that leaves one girl dead and causes a town to look back on another death in the same river ten years earlier. A poignant, suspenseful look at how secrets can reverberate through years.

This one didn't hit the mark for me. I did not think it was well thought out or written. Couldn't follow the story.

Thank you Netgally for the chance to read this intricate thread of crime, secrets, lies, truths and the fragility of life.

It is the dead of winter, quiet, as sounds are muffled by the snow. Outside a small Minnesota town, state troopers pull an automobile from the icy Black Root River. One girl is found downriver, drowned, while the other is found at the scene, half-frozen and unconscious, but alive. Was this an accident? No and news of the crime awakens the community’s memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier. They had a real suspect, but not enough to arrest him. Therefore, the killer may still be living among them. As the story unfolds, the surviving girl realizes that she’s connected to the earlier unsolved case of another girl who didn’t survive the river. The more she delves into her own investigation, the closer she comes to dangerous truths, and to the violence that is about to erupt in her small hometown.

Being from a small town myself, I could identify with the characters and scenes in the town which made the story come even more alive to me.

Tim Johnston is a brilliant writer don't miss this

Well plotted book. Story was interesting. I look forward to future books from this author. This was my first read from this author. He seems to have given a lot of time to the storyline. Really enjoyed the book.

If you are making your reading list for the new year (2019) then please add this wonderful book to it.
I loved his first book, "The Descent" and I must say this one is just at good.

An accident reawakens old memories and the death of a young girl 10 years previous which was never solved, but speculation ran rampant and even to this day affects the lives of those involved. How will this accident bring the truth to light after so much time below the surface of the river?

Set in the stark, bleak beauty of Minnesota in winter, and told with such beautiful, descriptive prose that you feel the snow falling and the utter subzero temperatures of the water, this book will draw you end and leave you gasping as you swim within the current.

Highly recommended!

With “The Current” Tim Johnston has written an instant classic. I didn’t think it would be possible to top his debut novel, but he actually blew it out of the water. “The Current” drops right into my favorite books list, somewhere between Dennis Lehane’s “Mystic River” and John Hart’s “The Last Child.” This is a story that I believe even the great Ron Rash would be thrilled to call his own. This is not a story for casual beach readers, this one requires every bit of your attention and demands your heart and soul.

A young woman is found dead in the local river. Years later two more college students end up in the river but this time one survives. The cases are not directly connected but many people are indirectly involved in both. The survivor Audrey is the daughter of the sheriff who investigated the first case. Audrey begins to unravel the mystery of the first case. Many people's lives were affected by the fact that no one was arrested. This was a great mystery and I like how the two cases were related.

Life is about the intrusion of the unexpected.

Sun-filled, glorious days fill us with the ease of life and its gentle flow. But it is the ravaged moments of night that brutal reality visits upon us. And with it comes the jagged scars that are deep, very very deep.

Two Iowa college girls take to the road heading north in the midst of an icy Minnesota winter. One girl has home as her destination. The other girl will have quite the unplanned destination. They stop nearly out of gas at a small town convenience store. A simple trip to the outside restroom will place them face-to-face with some hard-boned individuals from hell. They will soon find themselves on the banks of the Lower Black Root River facing consequences that they could never have imagined.

Tim Johnston presents a story that will evoke a whole range of escalating emotions. If you have read his previous book, Descent, you know where his talents lie. I simply had to give this one all the stars........the mighty 5-Star medal of honor. The storyline has a definitive ebb and flow like the aforementioned river. But it's uncanny ability to hone his characters into believable, raw, achingly human individuals who tread the high roads of life as well as the dark, foreboding roads, too.

Johnston can take unspeakable grief and give it a face. Agony and vengeance find a voice here. And not all heartbreak in life finds its way to the surface. Real people hold onto it and clutch it because it truly belongs to them alone. Pay attention to each soul that weaves patterns throughout this story. Savor the dialogue. Prepare yourself for Old Wyatt the cripped up rescue dog. We all serve our purpose in life whether of long or short duration. Tim Johnston gives us a hand on the shoulder to remind us of that truth.

I received a copy of The Current through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Algonquin Books and to the very talented Tim Johnston for the opportunity.

Thanks to Netgalley for a digital ARC of this book.

This was one intense read. I went into this not knowing much about it other than I had read Johnston's first book and thought it was pretty good. In this one, the hits keep on coming. There was a particular moment in the beginning--when I really didn't know what the book was about or what to expect--when I gasped, realizing what was happening to the two young, female characters. Overall, this isn't one person's story; rather, it tells the story of a number of people from the same community, each of them dealing with hardship and loss, many of these areas connecting in known and unknown ways. I found it to be very readable and became emotionally invested in the characters.

If I had a gripe about the book (other than the lack of formatting in my ARC--I assume the final version will help a great deal with the POV switches when it's properly formatted and edited), it's that the end didn't provide that final click I needed. The author gives you all the information you need to construct a strong theory about what happened--and I'm pretty sure I can come up with an answer for most of my questions--but you don't know for sure. And as I closed the last page, I was concerned about my theory because early in the book, Johnston shows us that you can't always believe the story you construct for yourself. Without giving anything away, he presents a version of events that even one boy's mother believes about him (and it's not good for him). But you start to realize, bit by bit, that there could be another narrative if you'd only consider it. When I got to the end and thought I knew what happened, I couldn't help but wonder if I really did or if Johnston was presenting me with another conundrum. So I'd like something a bit more concrete upon which to base my final interpretation.

One other thing I liked was the use of occasional supernatural in the book. There are several moments scattered throughout that suggest, like the overall plot, that currents run deep and you don't always know what's under the surface. You can choose, again like the plot, to interpret the supernatural elements however you like: does the twin brother have some kind of second sense about his bother? Or is he only engaging in fanciful thinking, fueled by his mental disability? Does the girl from the river really know the thoughts of other girls who have gone into the river with or before her? Or is she recalling dreams and nightmares from her horrific experience combined with the medicated rest afterwards in the hospital? It was a nice, subtle touch and well-done.

Overall, I recommend this novel. This is not, however, for the faint of heart.

I liked the beginning bilut somewhere towards the middle I felt the story was dragging. It kept me very interested in the plot, though. I just found the writing kind of heavy for me. But I definitely liked the story. The character I liked most was the ex Sherif, Sutter.

I also liked Audrey because she did not act stupid; and Caroline was a character that deserves a story of her own.

I am so not into paranormal things so I guess that is why I didn't enjoybthe story more. Not that it is paranormal, but it has just a little bit of it here and there.

At the end, I didn't finf out if they were actually murdered. Did somebody push their car into the river? I guess I missed that part as I skipped some pages here and there.

All in all a very nice story, and if you dig the writing, then you might just love it.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this title.

This book is phenomenal! Well written, fantastic development of the characters and totally memorizing! Could not put it down.

Thank you Net Galley for the free ARC.

Two girls on their way home on a sleety night, spin off the road and almost go into the river. Almost that is, until a car comes along and bumps them down the embankment into the current. Who would do such a thing? This sets off an investigation into another death that occurred long ago and was never solved. Good police drama.

I couldn't stop reading! This author grabs your attention with the first paragraph and keeps going. Any young women/women who have ever barely escaped from a scary situation will identify with Audrey; keep reading!