The Swimmer

Oil … meet water. My first Loreth Anne White book and I sadly did not mix.

Chloe Cooper is a socially awkward 40-year-old bartender/dog walker living with her dying mother. While out on a beach walk with her dog one day, she witnesses a woman with a pink swim cap get struck and killed by a jet ski who circles twice to make sure the job is done. This opens the book. Enthralling right? Now a podcast called It’s Criminal: The Chloe Cooper Story intersperses with the narrative to reveal the story before and after this murder.

In the “Before” chapters, we learn that Dr. Adam Spengler and his wife Jemma have just moved into the huge house across the street from Chloe. Chloe is insta-infatuated with Jemma after watching her and Adam through binoculars having sexy time in front of their blind-less windows. Gross. Adam, on the other hand, gives her unexplained heebie jeebies, which is further punctuated when she overhears him having a conversation she sees as a threat to Jemma.

What does our budding stalker do? She “helps”. What that looks like and where that leads is what you have to find out! The story tells us up front that multiple people died. Who are all the victims in this story and why did they die? That’s the spicy meatball, so to speak, and most people seemed to find it pretty tasty, so you can blame my particular reading palate for this one.  Unfortunately, a lot of elements didn’t work for me, but I’ll stick to the big three:

Forced Dialogue/Exposition:  I’ve had this issue with Jodi Picoult’s writing and a few others, where they learn all this detail about a topic - in this case generational trauma - and they awkwardly force lengthy exposition about it into the mouths of characters that have no reason to possess that kind of knowledge. Here we had a dance teacher, a barber, and a detective, for example, who could wax poetic with PhD level insights into the psychological motivations and actions of someone with trauma. The insights were solid, but who it came from and the melodramatic, unnatural ways they worded it had my eyes rolling. 

Word Choice: Can we not use “whore” and “slut” to label a female character - ESPECIALLY by another female character? The actions may fit, but there’s no need to perpetuate derogatory terms for anyone. There were also too many cringey lines like "I was hit by a sense of Evil with a capital E”, the cliché classics “If she couldn’t have him, no one would”, “No! Stop! You don’t have to do this!”, or “Run! Run for your life!”, which all felt ripped from a bad TV movie script.  My personal favorite though was: “Adam feels arousal in his groin”. That one actually gave me a good laugh. Nothing more romantic than the word “groin”, much less an aroused one, and no one in the history of EVER would say that.

Believability: I know, I know. It’s a thriller … I’m supposed to just shut up and roll with it, and normally I can, but this plot defied even my best attempts. Honestly, it takes me longer to write out my grocery list than it did for these murders to be plotted and carried out. Also, Chloe’s daddy reveal and the ending? I can’t say anything without spoiling it, but it’s just all kinds of preposterous. My brain couldn’t write that many rain checks.

Anyways, ignore my cranky review. Most readers seemed to have a MUCH better experience, so please check out their reviews before deciding on this. I’ll definitely try White again. I was just the wrong reader for this one!

★★ ½ 

Thanks to Montlake Publishing, NetGalley and author Loreth Anne White for this digital ARC to honestly review. It’s out now.