The Swimming Pool - Louise Candlish

***** An engaging and unpredictable story

I read each page of this book with great curiosity, because it was not the usual thriller with a dark and dramatic atmosphere where somebody eventually dies.

Aside from the prologue, “The Swimming Pool” brings you into the life of Natalie, a normal woman with a husband and a teenage daughter, who lives an extraordinary experience: make friends with Lara Channing, a local celebrity. She is thrown into an artificial environment that attracts her more and more, leading her to overlook her old friends and family.

What’s behind this interest from Lara about her?

The great thing about this book is that you don’t have the slightest idea of ​​where it will end up. What is the conflict that defines it? Does it concern Natalie, her husband, her daughter or Lara? Or someone else?

Well, every day I was anxiously waiting for the moment to immerse myself in it to find out what would happen next.

The characters are well built and the plot is never boring, although there is little action. In retrospect, I realise that this novel is characterized by a very well defined structure that allows the reader not to lose themselves in its three timelines.

During the reading, I sensed the author’s efforts to keep my focus on the core of story, preventing me from taking too much notice about the daughter of the protagonist, Molly, but I didn’t realise to what extent this aspect was crucial.

Moreover, the ending is the most beautiful thing in the book and made me decide for five stars, instead of the four deserved by the rest of the novel, especially because of the way it creates a parallelism between mother and daughter.

This does not mean that “The Swimming Pool” is a perfect novel.

I didn’t appreciate the misleading use of the prologue, for example.

Attention, spoiler: the prologue is a dream, not a real event. During the reading of the whole book, I was tormenting myself to try to place it in the story, but then I found out that I couldn’t, since it wasn’t a real event. And this was a disappointment.

As I said before, the novel is well structured, but at times, it’s too much structured that it looks artificial. The transition between the various timelines seems forced by the need to follow a pattern rather than giving the impression of being spontaneous within the development of the plot, and this distracted me several times from immersing myself into reading.

Moreover, the protagonist is overly naïve and weak. It is immediately apparent that Lara has approached her for a reason. In particular, the attitude of the protagonist of feeling always regretful even in the light of the deception she has suffered is irritating. Natalie has an overly low consideration of herself. I expected a reaction from her, revenge. What he had done as a girl could not be compared to the gravity in Lara’s actions, because the latter is an adult. Yet Natalie does not really get angry, she continues to feel guilty.

Once I reached the penultimate chapter, which is a long tedious account, I feared the story would implode. But then this is unexpectedly saved by the last chapter and I’m sorry that no more space was given to Molly, whose character is certainly much more interesting than her mother’s is.

The Swimming Pool on Amazon.