The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

By Joshilyn Jackson

Laurel loves her life. She loves her beautiful home, her teen daughter Shelby, her sometimes distant husband David, and her work designing and sewing artistic quilts. She especially loves the fact that since she moved to her new house in Victorianna, she never sees the ghost of her Uncle Marty anymore.
Her cozy life is turned upside down the night she sees a new ghost, Molly, a friend of her daughter. Turns out Molly is dead, drowned in Laurel's backyard swimming pool. Drastic times call for drastic actions, and Laurel undertakes the drastic action of inviting her sister Thalia to visit to help Laurel cope with the death of Shelby's friend Molly. The trouble with Thalia is that she is trouble. She criticizes Laurel's life, as she feels Laurel is stifled by her marriage, and Laurel's husband, who Thalia refers to as a robot, a guy that is all brain and no heart. Thalia really doesn't have room to criticize though, she comes off as supremely selfish, as evidenced by the night Laurel was sleep walking and Thalia let her walk out of the house and into a rain storm just so Thalia could follow her and observe how a sleepwalker behaves. Thalia is a serious actor and will do anything for her art, including endangering her sister's life. This episode caused a serious rift between the two sisters and put Thalia on David's shit list.
As Laurel looks into Molly's death, which has been ruled accidental by the authorities, she is certain there is more to the story. She suspects her daughter knows more than she is saying and she also suspects the local creepy guy may be involved too. But as she looks closer, with Thalia's prickly help, she finds that many of the things she assumed were true are not, past and present.

Although I did enjoy this story, I can't say that liked most of the characters, especially Thalia, Laurel and Shelby. About the only character that made sense to me was the husband David, and Shelby's cousin, Bet. I thought Laurel was a flake, Thalia is just mean and Shelby seemed pissed off all the time for no good reason. David was the real rock in the story and all my sympathy was with him and the pathetic hanger-on, Bet. Despite not caring much for the main characters, I still liked the book, which is really the story of two deaths, that of Uncle Marty and the teen girl, Molly.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.