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Description
'Exquisitely written and addictively dark. Sheer perfection' Clare Mackintosh The Swimming Pool is the gripping, twisty thriller from the author of the breath-taking Our House . . . 'I can't take my eyes off the water. Can you?' It's summer when Elm Hill lido opens, having stood empty for years. For Natalie Steele - wife, mother, teacher - it offers freedom from the tightly controlled routines of work and family. Especially when it leads her to Lara Channing, a charismatic former actress with a lavish bohemian lifestyle, who seems all too happy to invite Natalie into her elite circle. Soon Natalie is spending long days at the pool, socializing with new friends and basking in a popularity she didn't know she'd been missing. Real life, and the person she used to be, begins to feel very far away. But is such a change in fortunes too good to be true? Why are dark memories of a summer long ago now threatening to surface? And, without realizing, could Natalie have been swept dangerously out of her depth? 'A clever, claustrophobic thriller' Fabulous Magazine 'A compulsive psychological thriller that will give you shivers' Sunday Mirror 'Tautly plotted - a psychological drama with edge' Good Housekeeping 'Will keep you hooked with unexpected twists and turns until the end' Candis Read more
Publisher : Michael Joseph
Publication date : August 23, 2016
Language : English
Print length : 458 pages
ISBN-10 : 6
ISBN-13 : 76
Item Weight : 11.6 ounces
Dimensions : 5.08 x 1.1 x 7.8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #2,201,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #17,002 in Psychological Fiction (Books) #25,582 in Psychological Thrillers (Books) #79,266 in Women's Literature & Fiction
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Paperback
Good character development. Good twists even though the LAST twist is a bit unnecessary - the ending was ready very good. Good read.
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2017 by Amelia
Format: Paperback
I love the author. She is a great writer. This is definitely one of her best and a great summer read. I read it last summer so I am a bit slow to post. But the story draws you in and you can picture it all unfolding and it is a page turner.
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2017 by lovetoread
Natalie and Ed have been married 16 years. They're both teachers and they have one child, 13 year old Molly, who has a phobia about water. When the local swimming pool opens, Natalie starts attending and gets to know mega-glam, mega-wealthy, Lara. To her delight, Lara welcomes Natalie into her circle of friends with open arms. Soon Natalie is hanging out with Lara on a daily basis, ignoring the rifts that this creates with her former friends and her husband. However tension is simmering. We know from the prologue and also from the sub-plot, set a few weeks in the future, that drama is not far away. We know that Natalie has secrets from her past that she hasn't even told her husband. We sense, even if Natalie doesn't, that Lara's dazzling attentions are too good to be true. What we don't know is where the danger will come from. Will it comes from Molly's phobia? From Natalie's past? From Lara's hidden motivations? Or somewhere else entirely? This is the second book I've read by Louise Candlish and she has a highly readable style that pulls you right in. However the storyline in this instance is less compelling than in "The Sudden Departure of the Frasers". It takes a very long time to get going. The tension simmers along but not a lot happens until the final third of the book. In the final third there are pleasing twists and discoveries, but you have to be patient to get to them. I suspect that Candlish realised this problem and that's why she added the prologue which is (minor spoiler, minor spoiler) highly misleading and really annoyed me when I realized how it fitted into the story. Did I like this book? Sort of. It's not bad, it's just far too drawn out, with insufficient payoff for the reader when it all comes together. Plus I came to really dislike Natalie our narrator, which doesn't particularly help.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2016 by Julia Flyte
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. Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli, author of Kindred Intentions
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Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2017 by Anakina
I was quite excited to read The Swimming Pool. Another author that I really like had such high praise for it that I was sure it was going to be good. The book started well, and then it just kept going and going and going, but it wasn't really going anywhere. I do read a lot of thrillers, which tend to start with a bang, so I do have to remind myself when reading other genres that they have a slower pace. But The Swimming Pool didn't actually get anywhere at all. At 26% things seemed to pick up and I thought here we go, and so I read and I read and I read and I thought that I must surely be nearly finished, and then I checked and was only 56% in. It was only my belief that the author that loved it wouldn't let me down that made me keep going, I normally give up on books that are like this. While The Swimming Pool is very well written and I felt that the author was particularly good at setting scenes meaning I can picture in my head many of the places from the book very clearly, and there are many reviews praising the writing, but for me there was something missing. I often read books with characters in that I do not like, but the main character in The Swimming Pool was not just unlikeable but so loathsome that I struggled to tolerate reading about her. Her behaviour and thinking were so bizarre for someone of her age that it just made no sense. The other characters were better, and all believable and well written, but those that could have been more interesting often had small parts. The Swimming Pool generally gets really positive reviews, for whatever reason this book and I just did not click. It took me nine days to read it which is slow for me, even though I'm a slow reader. But everyone else can't be totally wrong, so maybe don't take my word for it? I received a copy of The Swimming Pool from the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest review.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2016 by If Only I Could Read Faster
Natalie is a teacher, so she has a long and lazy summer ahead of her. For the first time in many years the Elm Hill lido is open again. The pool has been restored and is a glorious place to spend a warm summer day. Natalie feels at home there immediately. Her daughter Molly can't swim and is afraid of water, but fortunately she's old enough to spend time with her friends, so Natalie can still go to the pool. There she meets Lara and she's drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Lara is glamorous, gorgeous and popular, everything that Natalie is not. Natalie is surprised when Lara invites her to parties and shows an interest in her. She loves it and spends as much time with her new friends as she possibly can. She's neglecting her family and longtime best friends. Her husband is a tutor and he has work to do during the summer, but even when he's free Natalie has better things to do. She's happy to be included. Are her new friends really as nice as she thinks they are though? While I was reading The Swimming Pool I constantly felt ill at ease. I loved how Louise Candlish manages to keep a constant level of tension and suspicion. The Swimming Pool is a book filled with secrets, unreliable characters and fascinating events. Something has happened and it's slowly being revealed. Everything in this story is exactly as it should be and it's the preciseness that makes this book so incredible. Louise Candlish has a great sense of timing and she delivers exactly when the story requires it. Natalie isn't the most wonderful person in the world. She idolizes her Lara and can't believe her luck when Lara starts including her as she knows she doesn't really fit in. It's obvious that there's something more going on and I couldn't wait to find out what it was. Natalie's husband isn't a sensitive person, Lara is over the top and Molly is reclusive. Does Natalie deserve better people in her life? Together they are a great recipe for disaster. Louise Candlish lets her readers know straight away that something indeed went very wrong, only it takes a while before she shows them what it is. Louise Candlish's writing flows easily. I loved the fact that she tells her story in such a calm way while actually there's a lot going on which is making it extra creepy. The ending is surprising and it's scarier than I expected. The last chapter is shocking and I absolutely loved this amazing finale. I can't recommend this book enough. I think it's a fantastic suffocating story with a lot of repressed suspense.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2016 by Suze Lavender
A great book, I loved it.
Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2016 by Ann