Score: 4.5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for gifting me a review copy of The Night Swim by Megan Goldin. I read this one as part of the Three Friends Book Club and it was such a fun book to discuss!

I didn’t love Goldin’s last book The Escape Room, but I’ll almost always give someone a second chance, and I am SO glad I did because I absolutely loved this one!

The book alternates between the main character Rachel Krall, letters from a woman named Hannah, and episodes of Rachel’s true-crime podcast. The podcast really set the tone for the book and provided such a unique recap of facts and opinions that I found myself eagerly looking forward to those sections and wishing they were longer. I loved the idea of Hannah’s letters, which were retellings of past events, but I found that they weren’t as compelling as the current-day sections of the book. It also bugged me a little that no-one ever saw Hannah but she always showed up at exactly the right time to leave a letter for Rachel to find, which seemed impossible.

Overall, this book was hugely entertaining and I didn’t want to put it down. I ended up binging the entire thing in a weekend, and my husband got so sick of me talking about it that he decided to read it too. I will say it is more of an unfolding mystery (almost a procedural) more than a thriller. But as I said, I found it so compelling I couldn’t put it down and I’m already feeling jealous of people that still get to read it for the first time.

I listened to the majority of it via audiobook and if you have the opportunity to listen to it I highly recommend you do! It was narrated so expertly by Bailey Carr, January LaVoy, and Samantha Desz, and comes in at just under 10 hours in length. You can grab a copy of the audio here, or grab a physical copy from an indie bookseller via the button below.

Synopsis:

After the first season of her true-crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall is now a household name―and the last hope for thousands of people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town’s golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating―but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered―and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody seems to want to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?