This is the Water
Recommended by Oprah's Books Worth Binge-reading list
Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2014!
In a quiet New England community members of swim team and their dedicated parents are preparing for a home meet. The most that Annie, a swim-mom of two girls, has to worry about is whether or not she fed her daughters enough carbs the night before; why her husband, Thomas, hasn’t kissed her in ages; and why she can’t get over the loss of her brother who shot himself a few years ago.
But Annie’s world is about to change. From the bleachers, looking down at the swimmers, a dark haired man watches a girl. No one notices him. Annie is busy getting to know Paul, who flirts with Annie despite the fact that he’s married to her friend Chris, and despite Annie’s greying hair and crow’s feet. Chris is busy trying to discover whether or not Paul is really having an affair, and the swimmers are trying to shave milliseconds off their race times by squeezing themselves into skin-tight bathing suits and visualizing themselves winning their races.
When a girl on the team is murdered at a nearby highway rest stop—the same rest stop where Paul made a gruesome discovery years ago—the parents suddenly find themselves adrift. Paul turns to Annie for comfort. Annie finds herself falling in love. Chris becomes obsessed with unmasking the killer.
With a serial killer now too close for comfort, Annie and her fellow swim-parents must make choices about where their loyalties lie. As a series of startling events unfold, Annie discovers what it means to follow your intuition, even if love, as well as lives, could be lost.
Reviews
“Obscenely suspenseful … the suspense is almost excruciating”
– Publisher’s Weekly
“Yannick Murphy, while being one of our most daring and original writers, is first and foremost an exquisitely attuned observer of human behavior. Her characters are so richly imagined and believable that when you’re finished with ... her book, you expect to find her characters’ names in the phone book. Murphy’s work provides pretty much unexceeded reading pleasure.”
– Dave Eggers, author of The Circle, What Is the What, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius