Loreth Anne White THE SWIMMER

 4* This author never fails to disappoint. An autobuy, after just 2 books.


This is a well-written and twisty tale that has you wondering what's up with the person we're first introduced to, Chloe, who's a bit of a loner, perhaps a bit wary of the law for unknown reasons, but at the same time, a decent person who looks out for her housebound mother, and who loves her ugly little dog. She may be nosy and when she witnesses a murder, doesn't step up as you'd expect a witness or a decent person to, but there's something decent about her, and in the end, life turns in her favour. In a very sweet and unexpected way that ended the tale perfectly for the until-then, misfit that she was.

The husband and wife characters aren't ones I could root for. Each was capable of doing awful things, as gets shown, and not all was as it seemed. The tale took me down different routes at different times, unexpectedly, and I didn't 'see' the collaboration between Chloe and a character who turned out to be devious, nasty and manipulative, that could've had horrible  consequences for Chloe, had someone not been decent enough to realise that things were amiss. The cop investigation felt kind of not integral to the tale, but was as expected, in a way, given that the focus was on characters, not on the murder/planning/hiding aspects. But, this author does disappoint and whilst the book didn't turn out to be the out-and-out police procedural that I expected, it was still a very good read, with unexpected warmth and decency and the start of better days for Chloe, a person that life and circumstances had trodden on. It was sad that her mother wasn't there to see it, especially with the shocking reveal about this old lady at the end of her life, because of the strength and determination that she showed in order to protect her child - that was unexpected and sad. I wish Chloe and her mum could've talked about this and made their peace a bit more, as Chloe's life was formed by her mother's actions, which in turn were because of what was forced onto the mother er, literally and metaphorically. 

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Montlake, for my reading pleasure.

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