The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

Grand Central Publishing, 336 pages

Laurel awakens one night to find her teenage daughter’s best friend at her bedside—a ghostly manifestation that leads Laurel to its body in the pool. This is a great beginning and allows the author to set the stage with characterization of the maternal, compassionate Laurel in action. We love her immediately. I particularly enjoyed Laurel’s reaction to the girl once she realizes the friend is dead: “You can’t be here.” I thought that was a pretty funny thing to say to a ghost, when a ghost can conceivably go wherever it wishes.

Thus begins Laurel’s quest to discover the secrets and betrayals (past and present) that resulted in this girl’s death.

An overriding theme in this novel is that the past is inextricably linked with the present. And this idea plays out with the ghost, too. The only other ghost Laurel has ever seen was her Uncle Marty years ago, seemingly unrelated, yet the two sightings mesh with each other in ways Laurel will eventually discover. Despite Laurel’s meticulously planned, picture perfect life, her childhood trauma, her mother’s shame, and her sisterly estrangement continue to reside within her. That her gated community carries the moniker “Victoriana” is symbolic since the Victorians were the masters of the surface conceit. In her quest for the truth, Laurel must dip below the surface of her seemingly idyllic life. She must dredge up the past from where it lurks in order to bring peace to the ghost, reconcile with her testy but astute sibling, and solve the mystery of the teen’s death.

My only complaint is that, although I liked the ultimate dénouement,  the ending was rushed with a sort of “what if” info dump, almost as if the author realized she had used up her word count allotment. (I sympathize.) This was a distraction in what was otherwise a compelling and exciting read.

Still, I decided to check out some other reviews of the book to see if others felt the ending faltered.  Some did, but it turns out, many readers decided the supernatural element distracted from the novel and would have liked to lose the ghost. I had the opposite reaction. I think the author handled the ghost element adeptly—subtle but well blended—and in each instance, the apparition propels the story forward. I would welcome even more spectral appearances and hope the author will favor us in the future with another book along this vein.