The Night The River Wept by Lo Patrick was the saddest book I read in 2025.
I’ve been on a journey to read at least two or three books a month. It was a hard start at the beginning of 2025 but, I realized that my problem wasn’t that I suddenly stopped enjoying reading. The problem was that I kept trying to read outside of my interests. Normally, I’m a mystery and thriller girl. I like a fast paced book with a crime to solve and suspense packed within the pages. Reading sad books is not my general area of interest.
I can’t particularly remember what made me want to read The Night The River Wept. I think because there was a crime to solve I thought it would come off as a mystery thriller. For me, that wasn’t the case. The most mysterious and thrilling thing to happen in this book was the ladies fist fighting in a parking lot then sitting down for dinner.
The book flips between the current time and old journal entries which kept my interest up. As I progressed through the book I started to realize just how sad this whole thing wasn’t. Not just the murder of three completely innocent children but, the reason for it.
I thought when we first discover who was responsible it was absolutely disgusting that someone would be willing to kill for basically nothing. Naturally, the fact that they’re killing children for essentially nothing made it worse. But, what I couldn’t decide was if the truth was actually worse than that. Because although the second person just floated the idea and was basically bullied into participating in the crime, he wanted those kids to die and for the most selfish reason on Earth.
The fact that the second man who wanted the kids died suffered in the way that he did (almost immediately too) made me feel like “that’s what your ass gets”. Period. God didn’t let that mans evil deeds go unrepayed, he was handing out that karma in a weeks time.
It’s just sad for everyone all around, all the loss, all the trauma, all the grief. The fact that this was a cold case for so long when it didn’t have to be. Greed, reputation, class and a little fear – they all played a part in these boys never getting the justice that they deserved. Well, they didn’t get justice for a long time atleast.
There are so many people in the world that turn their noses up at others for simple things like bank account balances. They really see you as less than and they’re willing to do anything to keep you at bay. They don’t want you shopping in their stores, going to their schools, dating their kids or working together. It literally eats them alive to see you enjoying life at the same way they do.
The crazier part of it all is that the second man would just have easily had the actual killer killed too if he knew about what he was doing. Or if he knew who was hiding in his truck. The second man was the biggest devil in the entire book. If he could have just opened up his heart and been accepting those poor boys death could have been avoided.
I’m trying not to spoil too much so everything I’m saying might be kind of confusing but I want you to read the book. I want you to pick up a copy and read for yourself and share your thoughts and feelings about it with someone. I literally had to take a reading break after this particular book.
Anyways let me know if you read it in the comments below!