What the River Keeps by Cheryl Grey Bostrom Review

About the Book

Title: What the River Keeps

Author: Cheryl Grey Bostrom

Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers

Released: August 12, 2025

Genre: Women’s Fiction (with notes of suspense, mystery, and a thriller)

Back Cover Copy:
Hildy Nybo is a successful biologist, her study of the Pacific Northwest’s wild fish both a passion and a career. But behind her professional brilliance, Hildy’s reclusive private life reflects a childhood fraught with uncertainty. Despite her father’s love and her mother’s sympathy, she grew up constantly losing even her most cherished belongings, unable to recall where she misplaced them. Haunted by the confusion of those early years, she now records her life in detailed diaries and clings tightly to memory-prompting keepsakes.

Then her mother’s health fails, and Hildy accepts a job near her childhood home, joining a team of scientists who will help restore her beloved Elwha River after the demolition of two century-old dams. There Hildy settles into one of the cabins on her family’s rustic resort―a place she both loves and dreads, for reasons she can’t fully explain.

When local artist Miranda Rimmer rents an adjacent cabin for her pottery studio, Hildy shrinks from such a close neighbor. But then Miranda’s carpenter brother, Luke, shows up to help with construction and captures Hildy’s attention. Now a few years beyond a tragedy that brought him to his knees, Luke recognizes a kindred soul in Hildy, and they build a relationship that dismantles the walls Hildy’s built to keep people out. As troubling pieces of the past surface, Hildy dares to wonder if she can banish the shadows that have burdened her and follow her river’s course to freedom. 

Buy links:

Amazon: https://a.co/d/cL9Epn2

Amazon CA: https://a.co/d/4O1vP8e

Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/4ak264kj

Books-A-Million: https://tinyurl.com/4fn6p679

Christianbook.com: https://tinyurl.com/42dwxrp9

Bookshop.org : https://tinyurl.com/5xfy2dn5

About the Author

A keen student of the natural world and the workings of the human heart, Pacific Northwest author Cheryl Grey Bostrom captures the mystery and wonder of both in her lyrical, surprising fiction.

Her novels Sugar Birds (Christy finalist, Amazon bestseller, and Book of the Year) and Leaning on Air have won more than two dozen industry honors, among which are Christianity Today’s Fiction Award of Merit and American Fiction, Reader’s Favorite, ACFW Carol, Nautilus, Best Book, IPPY, Foreword Indies, and International Book Awards. Kirkus Reviews named Cheryl’s newest work of contemporary women’s fiction, What the River Keeps, as a Best Indies Book of June 2025.

An avid birder and nature photographer, Cheryl lives in rural Washington State with her husband and a pack of half-trained Gordon setters.

My Impressions

“‘There’s Love in that book. It’s a road map out of the dark.’ Out of her anxiety, too?”

What the River Keeps by Cheryl Grey Bostrom is about a brilliant fish/river naturalist in the PNW who, due to childhood issues, could be considered an unreliable narrator. Hiding her true self from most people, Hildy limps solo through life, until the past comes calling and forces a return home. Will this change destroy her, or will she find the strength and courage to overcome fears of the past? Heart-wrenchingly beautiful! This book will tear you up and make you cry before it rebuilds your faith in humanity and God’s ability to take care of his precious chosen ones. 

“They hush me, Daddy. Every fish I see.” At 10, Hildy is overwhelmed by the sense of the amazing, the obvious evidence of a great Creator God when she sees fish. Her father, a warm nurturer, encourages her to look for God in nature. However, her mother, quick to correct Hildy and obviously ashamed of what she deems as “quirkiness,” quickly shuts down Hildy’s searching nature. 

Years later, we find Hildy as a brilliant fish biologist and river conservationist, but a person who has very few social skills and very definite oddities, stiff-arming most people. 

I loved Junie and her hubby Otis who love the family and serve the family business selflessly. While they love unconditionally without judgement, Otis does tell Hildy, “‘You want to get free a those chains a yours? All that anxiety?’ Here we go again. ‘You know I do.’ ‘Then—‘ ’Stop, Otis. You’ve told me fifty times.’ Maybe not fifty, but while Fourth of July campers had settled into the resort’s quiet hours, he’d repeated himself so often she could hear him in her sleep: ‘Do some diggin’. Find the lie.’”

Against incredible odds, when Hildy meets new cabin renter Miranda’s brother, Luke, a gradual rapport develops between the two. Luke’s had losses in the past, but he has learned to turn them over to God, so he can have the strength to move on. Hildy and Luke dance around a relationship, with Hildy’s issues rising up like a monolith dam to separate them. Luke wants to face Hildy’s stunting emotional issues with her- will she allow him that close? Will Hildy be able to accept that someone could love her wholeheartedly, and how will surprising revelations from her past affect or stall her growth? 

Bostrom creates Hildy, a character so full of anxiety and fear for her own sanity, that I thought she’d be hard to relate to. Instead, I learned to love her deeply. I wonder how many other people may be out in our world, limping by on their self-made crutches when God wants to heal the source of the problem. 

One of my top books of 2025!

I received a copy of the book from the author and Tyndale Publishers. I also bought my own copy. No positive review is required, and all opinions are my own. 

Notable Quotables:

“That locust verse I promised to send you, different version: ‘I will give you back what you lost.’” – Luke

“Some lies get handed down, become strongholds kids are raised with.” – Luke

“That cabin’s a big old stove, darlin’, with stories still cookin’ inside…I trust those memories will make sense to you once they’re baked. Some will even be beautiful.”– Junie 

“I’ve spent the better part of my life hiding the fact that I’m crazy, Luke. Crazy. If people knew what goes on in my head, I’d lose what little credibility I have.”

My Rating

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Superior!! I just want to rise and give a standing ovation!