Review of The Night Swim

Blurb: Ever since her true-crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall has become a household name—and the last hope for people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

The new season of Rachel's podcast has brought her to a small town being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. A local golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season 3 a success, Rachel throws herself into her investigation—but the mysterious letters keep coming. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered—and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody in town wants to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases—and a revelation that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?

Review: The new season of Rachel Krall's true-crime podcast is going to be bigger than the ones before. This time, she's following the case as it goes to trial. A championship swimmer is accused of raping the granddaughter of the local police chief. The coastal town of Neapolis has never seen anything this big, and Rachel is determined to cover it all. Yet as she's busy with the case, mysterious letters keep turning up asking Rachel to solve the murder of a girl twenty-five years ago. Rachel finds herself hooked on the cold case and wonders how the current case links with the old one.

This is the first book in a well-written crime thriller series, Rachel Krall. Rachel is very much like a Lois Lane. She was an investigative reporters before she started her podcast and her curiosity drives her into dangerous situations. We didn't really get to know Rachel very well. She sometimes feels like the vehicle to bring the story together rather than the protagonist. The case is heartbreaking and it follows it a lot in court. You get the graphic testimony of the rape from the victim and the even more graphic memories of the sister of the victim in the cold case. The past is slowly revealed through the letters and it was a nice twist at the end. The past case and the current one loosely link together only because the town is small enough.

You can find Megan Goldin on her website and buy the book here.