The Night Swim

The Night Swim
By: Megan Goldin

A well-known true-crime podcaster is mysteriously contacted to investigate a case in a small town.

Having recently watched Limetown on Facebook, I couldn’t help but picture Jessica Biel investigating and voicing the podcast. Different subject matter but same concept. I think Goldin could have fleshed out the podcast part more to sound more like a legitimate podcast but it wasn’t distracting.

This was a hard book to read, if rape is a trigger for you, better pass on this one. It’s so hard to read descriptions of sexual assault (it wasn’t overly graphic) and the evil men can have in treating women this way. It will probably get you riled up.

Rape is a sensitive topic. Unfortunately, those who have accused falsely have tainted how others’ stories are viewed and brought to justice. It’s interesting how persuasive writing can be. I would say I am not of the camp where we *always* believe all rape claims are true, though I think the vast majority of them are real. However this story definitely forces you to consider the cost to the rape victim to take allegations to trial. The fact that she is essentially experiencing the trauma and humiliation all over again but publicly, is hard to stomach, especially in the cross-examination. To think about it in those terms, puts rape trials into a new perspective. What an important topic to explore and challenge readers on! Ugh I just can’t even understand how a person can be driven to do this to another person and I want to go on rampage and bring justice to all victims of such evil!

Goldin brought the story to life. It focuses more on the court case and investigation than getting to know the characters on a deep level. I was okay with that. I did not feel unattached to the story and I feel like entering into the mind of the rape victims would have almost taken away from the effectiveness of the revealing.

I liked the connection between the two rape events to add another dimension. I wasn’t super keen about how Hannah handled requesting help- how would she really expect someone to respond to such a cloak and dagger approach? Maybe at first to get her attention makes sense but the continual refusing to meet and being creepy in how she delivered information was a bit much. But again, didn’t really take away my engagement in the story.

‘Enjoyed’ seems like a wrong word to describe how you feel about reading this book because the content is violent and heart-breaking, but I am glad to have read it. I feel like it is a meaningful story and was handled well. I will probably look into reading more of this author’s books.

Little pet peeves: overuse of the word ‘surreptitiously’; always using ‘getting hold of’ instead of ‘getting ahold of’ like a normal person; 96,000 people is not a ‘small town’ and people don’t know everyone and everyone’s business- live in a town of 2000 and try describing that again; and Hannah’s portions didn’t seem like a natural retelling verbally or in writing and was a bit frustrating and unrealistic how she split it up the way she did

**Received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**