The Night Swim
If you like ripped-from-the-headlines stories, The Night Swim is for you. Combining several recent headline-making cases (rape by a golden-boy swimmer, true-crime podcast captivates the nation), the book’s fictional distance allows readers to examine both.
While the cover especially makes it look like a thriller, this is more of a procedural courtroom drama, with a twist. Rachel Krall’s true-crime podcast is a sensation, and she goes to Neapolis to follow the trial of a star swimmer accused of raping a teen girl.
While there, she receives mysterious messages from Hannah, who claims her sister Jenny was murdered 25 years prior–though it was officially called an accidental drowning. As Rachel follows the trial, she also digs into Hannah’s story, which has unsettling similarities to the current case.
The Night Swim was excellent on audio. I loved the perspective of a true-crime podcaster, as well as the story’s sensitive take on rape, victim-blaming, and how all-star defendants are treated.
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Publisher’s Description
In this new thriller from the author of The Escape Room, a podcast host covering a controversial trial in a small town becomes obsessed with a brutal crime that took place there years before. 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. Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?
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