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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.

Free sample

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 (41,601)

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Repeat authors
View all
The Bodyguard
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
House of Glass
Like Mother, Like Daughter
The Lost Story
The Night Swim
The Pairing
Beach Read
Hera
The God of the Woods
One-Star Romance
The Paradise Problem
We Are the Brennans
Daisy Jones & The Six
This Tender Land
The Silent Patient
The Four Winds
You Are Not Alone
One by One
Yours Truly
Invisible Girl
The Rules of Magic
Survive the Night
Troubles in Paradise
Home Before Dark
The Lost Apothecary
Things You Save in a Fire
Real Americans
The Wishing Game
One Day in December
The Great Alone
People We Meet on Vacation
The Reckless Oath We Made
Lock Every Door
The Family Upstairs
Long Bright River
Infinite Country
Part of Your World
Recursion
The Half Moon
A Ladder to the Sky
The Sun Down Motel
The Mothers
The Vanishing Half
Memorial
The Shadows
Immortal Longings
Just for the Summer
The Connellys of County Down
The Knockout Queen
Happy & You Know It
Ask Again, Yes
Practical Magic
Lot
The Woman in Cabin 10
Dark Matter
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Final Girls
Hello Stranger
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
The Wife Between Us
The Broken Girls
In a Holidaze
The Kiss Quotient
The Last Time I Lied
Gods of Jade and Shadow
A Million Junes
The Bride Test
Darling Girls
The Turn of the Key
The Last Word
Dark Corners
Foul Lady Fortune
Evil Eye
The Soulmate