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The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

Thriller

The Night Swim

by Megan Goldin

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Quick take

A thriller for those who eat, sleep, and breathe true crime: A podcaster cracks open a small-town cold case.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Fast_Read

    Fast read

  • Illustrated icon, Legal_Thriller

    Legal thriller

  • Illustrated icon, Whodunit

    Whodunit

  • Illustrated icon, Suburban

    Suburban drama

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 insists 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.

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Get an early look from the first pages of The Night Swim.

The Night Swim

1

Hannah

It was Jenny’s death that killed my mother. Killed her as good as if she’d been shot in the chest with a twelve-gauge shotgun. The doctor said it was the cancer. But I saw the will to live drain out of her the moment the policeman knocked on our screen door.

“It’s Jenny, isn’t it?” Mom rasped, clutching the lapel of her faded dressing gown.

“Ma’am, I don’t know how to tell you other than to say it straight.” The policeman spoke in the low-pitched melancholic tone he’d used moments earlier when he’d pulled up and told me to wait in the patrol car as its siren lights painted our house streaks of red and blue.

Despite his request, I’d slipped out of the back seat and rushed to Mom’s side as she turned on the front porch light and stepped onto the stoop, dazed from being woken late at night. I hugged her withered waist as he told her what he had to say. Her body shuddered at each word.

His jaw was tight under strawberry blond stubble and his light eyes were watery by the time he was done. He was a young cop. Visibly inexperienced in dealing with tragedy. He ran his knuckles across the corners of his glistening eyes and swallowed hard.

“I’m s-s-sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he stammered when there was nothing left to say. The finality of those words would reverberate through the years that followed.

But at that moment, as the platitudes still hung in the air, we stood on the stoop, staring at each other, uncertain what to do as we contemplated the etiquette of death.

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Why I love it

I spend far too much time on screens, so when I was emailed an electronic copy of The Night Swim, I requested a paper copy to read instead. But by the time the novel landed in my mailbox—just a couple of days later—I'd already devoured the entire book, reading late into the night on my laptop.

The book is that good. No, it's that great.

The Night Swim weaves together the stories of two vicious crimes against young women: one woman who is accusing a star athlete of rape, and one woman whose bruised body was pulled from the ocean 20 years ago. Rachel Krall, host of the popular true crime podcast “Guilty or Not Guilty,” heads to the small town of Neapolis to cover the rape trial. But when she begins receiving letters from Hannah, the sister of the supposedly drowned girl, Rachel finds herself pulled into that old, unsolved mystery. As the dual narratives unspool, twisting like a double helix, they intersect in ingenious ways.

A blistering plot and crisp writing make The Night Swim an unputdownable read. But even more than that, it's the unflinching look at what sexual assault does to a young woman that makes this a vitally important book.

Member ratings (41,824)

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Thriller
View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless