A review by albon
The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

4.0

2020 review:

“Yes, I have been a victim of a sexual assault. Well, probably several really. Funny how we were conditioned to accept these situations as unpleasant instead of outrageous.”

Very infuriating and powerful thriller about rape and rape culture.

The Night Swim follows Rachel, who travels to a small town to cover a currently ongoing rape trial for her very popular true crime podcast. But when she's there she discovers that the town has even darker secrets, just waiting to be discovered.

I really liked the characters in this book, Rachel especially. She's such a good investigator, and is never afraid to go to the places she wants to go and ask the questions she needs to ask. But generally I just thought every character Rachel came into contact with was interesting to read about.

The story was also very interesting, and the writing was good. I liked how she dealt with rape culture. It's a topic I'm always interested to read about, and I think Megan Goldin really managed to combine these darker themes with writing an interesting thriller. It was dark and depressing without the sadness of it all completely taking over the actual story.

I did think it was a little too easily solvable. It's definitely not necessarily a bad thing that the readers can solve the mystery, I think that's a sign of great writing to be honest, and a part of what makes reading thrillers/mysteries fun, but in this case I feel like I more or less solved everything just a little too early.

The ending also didn't entirely work for me. The way the plot wrapped up was good, but a couple of things in the last chapter just moved very fast. Nothing big, but just small annoyances. [A plaque for Jenny? Did everyone find out what happened to her? Did everyone believe it? Just how much time passed in that last chapter? And why did she kiss Alkins on the cheek? If she had to kiss anyone, I thought she would kiss the detective, not that there was anything going on between them, but he seemed very sweet and always helpful. And sure Alkins' story was sad, but... it was kinda his own fault he ended up in that situation, I'm not sure how much sympathy or kisses on the cheek he really deserved. (hide spoiler)]