secrets and lies

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: On the surface, this book is about how one of her daughter's friends came to be drowned in Laurel's pool in the middle of the night. The answer turns out to be both surprisingly mundane and unexpected. But the real story has to do with Laurel's relationship with her sister whose presence in Laurel's life has always been both comforting and disturbing. In the course of trying to figure what happened to the drowned girl, Laurel is forced to accept truths about her sister and her mother and their shared past as a family. Laurel and her sister must both accept the choices that the other has made.

Jackson has written an intriguing story, and one that is well-told. The tension builds throughout the book, and is not released until close to the very end. And even though the book would have been sufficient without it, Jackson has given us a very satisfying epilogue that in some ways has stuck with me more than the entire rest of the book.