Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
Unavailable
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
Unavailable
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
Audiobook9 hours

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Published by Hachette Audio

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook




LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 4, 2008
ISBN9781594839238
Unavailable
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Related to The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Ghosts For You

View More

Reviews for The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Rating: 4.049689440993789 out of 5 stars
4/5

161 ratings40 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Girl Who Stopped Swimming was a pretty good book overall.

    It wasn’t overly engaging and I found my mind wandering more often than not. There’s talk about blanket making, which is laurels occupation, but it comes into the story so randomly and doesn’t necessarily seem to have a grand significance overall.

    I did enjoy the dynamic between Laurel, Thalia, and David though! That was woven very well, and the tension was palpable.

    I think my favorite part of this book is that Joshilyn Jackson is the author AND narrator! I’ve only encountered this one other time and it was dreadful! But Joshilyn Jackson nailed it!

    I don’t know that I’d try another audiobook by her, but I would be curious to read one of her books, and see how it compares!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I really enjoy Joshilyn Jackson's books. They are beyond creative and clever (clever definitely not used as a pejorative in this case) and everything works, the characters and the, I don't know, I wasn't an English major, plot? She makes everything fit together, but in surprising ways. She narrated the last two that I've 'read' and she did it very,very, well!!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting story that kept my interest. Strong moral questions raised that makes you evaluate yourself
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I can’t get enough of this author! Story after story is just love...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This author is fabulous! I enjoy the southern-ness of her books ... u can relate someone u know with some of the characters in the book... and the author reading the book is a bonus!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was really interesting. I love the way Jackson weaves a story and employs so many twists and turns. In this book, she introduces us to Laurel. She can see ghosts and one has just woke her up. Molly who just died in Laurel's pool has just opened up a can of worms for Laurel and her family. Through her investigation of Molly's death, she faces ghosts from her past and finds out that her wonderful life may not be that wonderful. One of the most memorable characters was Thalia. She had spunk and was extremely outspoken about her distaste for Laurel's life and especially her husband (the feeling is mutual). Although she can be blantantly honest and sometimes mean, Thalia won me over and I just thought she was such a refreshing character. A wonderful mystery that verges on chick lit

    4 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It wasn't until I was nearly done with this book (which in the audio version I have is read by the author) that I realized I've read and really liked two other books of hers. This one was sort of neutral for me. I never really engaged in the characters, ghosts, or story. It may be because I had a lot going on when I was trying to listen and I lost important threads; it may have been the story itself. Who is to say? There were moments where I'd be caught up in the sister drama of Laurel and Thalia, but then my mind would drift off. Considering how much I liked BEtween and Gods in Alabama, I was a little surprised this one didn't hold me more.

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The characters are an awesome dynamic in this book - the way they interact is what made me keep reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a quick read. At first I didn't think I liked where it was heading, but overall I found it an interesting book.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nice interplay between the sisters: on the one hand, you know me best; on the other hand, get out of my house and never come back. Likewise a couple of good spouses: loyal but with opinions of their own. The ripple effects that a past tragedy brings to the next one.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    sucks! horrible writing. didn't care about characters. confusing at times.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Author repeated alot. Had good description writing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book! It is a mystery, but has the relatable characters and situations of the "women's literature" genre, some humorous characters to lighten the mood, some social commentary to add depth, and just a touch of the supernatural for extra interest. Laurel is a Southern suburbanite who is awakened one night to discover her teen daughter's friend drowned in the backyard pool. Laurel and her sister Thalia set out to find out how this happened, but Laurel also makes some discoveries about herself along the way. The plot twists kept me reading late into the night.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A compelling story by the author of the very moving "Between, Georgia", this opens with an arresting first sentence: "Until the drowned girl came to Laurel's bedroom, ghosts had never walked in Victorianna." This is a very well-written story about what happens after a young girl is found drowned in the pool of Laurel Hawthorne, who thought she had escaped the ghost of her Uncle Marty, dead in a hunting accident years ago, and the ruined town her mother came from. Laurel turns to her very unconventional actress estranged sister, Thalia, who helps her uncover the secrets hidden within her town, her seemingly perfect family, and the ghosts of her own past. I preferred "Between, Georgia", but this book was a distinct pleasure.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is the third book I've read by Jackson. Loved Gods in Alabama, and Between, Georgia. Couldn't get through this one for some reason.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Girl Who Stopped Swimming gripped me in a way I can't explain. I didn't love the book; but, I couldn't put it down. Joshilyn Jackson's writing draws the reader in like the lights in the bottom of an empty pool in the darkness of a hot, summer night. While I had hoped for, and almost expected, some of the laugh-out-loud moments Jackson used in Gods in Alabama, I was not disappointed by the darkness of the novel. Jackson presents each character in a way that gives the reader insight into the soul of even the shallowest of characters. The cast of this novel is composed of those people around us that we prefer to know of than to know and from whom we turn away we see reflections of our own weaknesses.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Lovely book. I'm 3 for 3 this week, a rarity!So Laurel has this perfect life, sortof, with a husband who works computer code in the basement and a daughter she loves too much turning 12. And then her daughter's best friend Molly drowns one night in her pool and Molly's ghost comes to wake up Laurel and nothing is the same.I liked the relationship between the sisters - Thalia and Laurel. I liked Laurel and the life she was trying to build for herself. I liked David (sometimes known as Dave) and the marriage they had. I liked the ending, it felt believable. (within the realms of the story) I liked it all. I'd rate it an A, and a keeper.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Enjoyable, but I was ruined by her first book, which is amazing. I liked this one and will continue to read her work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I don't know if there's a genre of fiction where the main character does detective work but isn't a detective. If there were, this book would be in it. The main character is very interesting, as is her sister, who gets involved in the investigation. As well as the main strand of the story there are other strands of their past lives that get mixed in. The ghost strand of the story adds an extra dimension, without dominating the plot.An involving mystery.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Laurel is occasionally visited by ghosts. The ghost of one of her 11 year old daughter's friends visits her at the beginning of her novel and leads her to her dead body floating in Laurel's swimming pool. The police investigation finds the death to be an accident but Laurel is not so sure. She suspects a man in the neighborhood, who may be a pedophile. She is also afraid that her daughter Shelby knows something about it, but is too frightened to say it. She goes to her older sister Thalia for help, and together they start investigating. I mostly enjoyed the book, except for the major plot development in the middle that seem greatly overdone. In it, Thalia acts so horribly and Laurel reacts so extremely, that it did not feel real. Laurel seemed out of character and Thalia should have been immediately disowned by her sister. But, the book progressed nicely past that point and had a reasonable ending.The book focuses on family relationships, Laurel's mother and husband also figure prominently, and how we cannot escape our pasts.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I was lucky enough to win a copy of "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming" from a fellow blogger. It's not what I typically read, it's not my typical fantasy or sci-fi. Nope, it's a ghost story with quite a bit of relational and psychological drama thrown in! I happen to eat up drama, so I loved this book!Laurel Gray Hawthorne has built for herself a wonderful life. She has a husband, a beautiful daughter, and they live in a quite suburban neighborhood where no one really rocks the boat. But Laurel has a secret that even her husband doesn't know. She has what's commonly called "the sight" and grew up seeing ghosts. Laurel hasn't seen a ghost in a long time though. The neighborhood is too new, and she's firmly locked away that part of her past into a dark part of her memory. That is, until the ghost of her daughters best friend appears in her bedroom, beckons her to the window, and points out the girls own freshly dead body in Laurel's pool.The drama unfolds quickly from there as things Laurel had neatly packed away in her memory come rushing back into her life. One thing that was fascinating about this book is that there are several threads that weave in and out through the book. The unfold slowly and there were a lot of things that managed to catch me by surprise! The ghosts do play a big role, as does Laurel's dysfunctional family, neighborhood secrets, and finally, what lead to the dead body in the pool.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Story OverviewLaurel Hawthorne is haunted by ghosts. During her childhood, she is haunted by her Uncle Marty. But Marty disappeared when Laurel and her husband David moved into the gated community of Victorianna. But one night, Laurel -- a lifelong sleepwalker -- is awakened by another ghost. This time the ghost is Molly -- a neighborhood girl and a friend of her daughter Shelby. Molly's ghost is brand-new -- in fact, her body is floating in Laurel's swimming pool.Although Molly's death is ruled an accident, Laurel cannot help but think that Molly's ghost wants her to uncover what happened to her. Worse, her daughter Shelby is acting like she might know more than she lets on. And Bet Clemmens -- a relation of Laurel's who has come to visit with Shelby for the summer (a way for Laurel to make peace with her poverty-stricken roots of DeLop) -- seems to be helping Shelby cover something up.Laurel's computer geek husband David is no help in a crisis like this. So Laurel turns to the only person she knows can help -- her estranged sister Thalia. Thalia is a larger-than-life, straight-talking actress (she has her own rundown theater) who views Laurel's marriage as a jail, and her home in the gated community as the prison cell. Against David's wishes, Laurel brings Thalia home with her to help find out what happened to Molly. In the course of their investigation, the skeletons in their family closet begin to rattle their bones, Laurel's marriage is shaken to its core, and the sister's relationship is redefined and pushed to its limits.My ThoughtsI loved this book! The story flies along with numerous twists and turns, and the characters -- especially Thalia -- are wonderfully written and memorable. The supernatural aspects of the story are well-handled. Much like Alice Hoffman (who brings a kind of magic realism to so many of her books), Jackson is able to work in the ghosts in a believable and plausible way. You believe in what Laurel sees, but you also find yourself nodding your head when Thalia debunks Laurel's ghost stories.Although the primary story is finding out what happened to Molly, much of the book is really about Laurel and Thalia coming to terms with their childhood, their mother, what happened to Uncle Marty, and their mother's hometown of DeLop. DeLop -- a fictional town -- is almost like a character in the book. The poverty and neglect that the town spawns affects everyone who comes in contact with it -- whether they admit it or not. Laurel -- who has tried to hide the reality of DeLop from David and Shelby -- must finally come clean with herself about what is going on there.Another rich subplot is David and Laurel's marriage. Thalia has always made it her mission to end the marriage -- which she believes is holding Laurel back from being her "true" self. When Laurel begins to doubt the strength of her marriage, the author does a wonderful and believable job of showing why a marriage that looks "all wrong" on the outside might actually work at its core.I could go on and on about all the rich details in this book -- Laurel's quilts, the social niceties of a gated community, the use of the book Watership Down (which this book totally made me want to read!). I think Joshilyn Jackson did an amazing job with all aspects of this book. Bravo!My Final RecommendationThis is a satisfying, fun and rich read. Once you start, you'll get pulled into the story -- so be prepared to dedicate some time to finish it up as you'll want to know what happens sooner rather than later! I just adored Thalia, who I think added some needed humor to what is really a fairly grim and depressing story. This was a great read, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Compelling, mysterious with incredibly fleshed out and deep characters. What a twist at the end . I did not see that coming at all. At the end of the book, I could not turn the pages fast enough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was my first Joshilyn Jackson, so I have nothing to compare it to. I enjoyed it, but there was definitely something just a tad off about it. Perhaps it was, as some reviewers have pointed out, that it was too scattered. Perhaps the characters weren't as well-developed as they could have been. One thing, the first half dragged for me. Not sure anymore when it changed, but about halfway through I started to get into it more. The ending worked just fine for me within the context of the story, although I wasn't completely happy with it. I mean, I didn't want it to end that way, and, now that I think of it, it was a little to "pat" an ending. I think in "real life" it would have been a lot messier at the end. Anyway, I gave it a 3-1/2 star rating because it was good but not great.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is not a book I would normally have picked up, but I got a copy to review on my blog from Hatchette Group publishers so I read it & I'm glad I did.This was a really fun read! The story of the two sisters trying to come to terms with their pasts & their differences amidst a murder mystery that came floating up to the more conventional sister's door is compelling, funny, & very human.The author has said that this is a book about poverty &, although only the last quarter of the book is spent in DeLop, AL, the grandmother's hometown & the site of bone-crushing phyical poverty, there is poverty of one kind or another throughout this book - poverty of language, poverty of understanding, poverty of attention & caring.So many of us live shut off in gated communities going from cookie cutter house to picture perfect office rarely truly seeing a world around us that doesn't look just like us. By the same token, an equal number of us go from our groovy lofts to our political meeting to the alternative art space run by our friend's lover's hairdresser & we tend to hold others in contempt, as well.In the end, perhaps a reconciliation is in order between all of us - that & a bit more tolerance might just make the world turn a little more peacefully.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was disappointed in this one by Jackson whose other two books (Between, Georgia and gods in Alabama) I really enjoyed. I agree with the review which said the first 200 pages were good. I got that far and was excited. I liked Laurel and her wild sister Thalia, plus character of David the husband was well drawn too. Then it fell apart.Maybe I'm just reading too many other books right now on the issue of social class, but I felt like the subject wasn't handled well in here, despite Jackson's good intentions. And are there really coal mines in south Alabama? Doesn't sound right to me. Jackson's a great southern chick lit writer. This just wasn't her best effort. I do like her blend of suburbia and the supernatural, so I hope she'll do more with that in the future.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I started reading this book because it looked like it had all the elements I usually look for in a novel--good characters, working through past issues, gaining a greater understanding of where they are in their lives now. It had all of those elements, but they weren't presented in a particularly interesting way.The main character wakes in the middle of the night to see the ghost of one of her daughter's friends. The ghost leads her down to their backyard pool where her body is floating. The rest of the book tries to unravel why the girl drowned and who was involved. Thalia, the main character's sister, was the most interesting character, and yet even she was sort of a cardboard cut-out. I finished reading the book, but was glad, at the end, that it was over. More than anything I was just bored and no longer cared about the characters. It seemed like the author just needed to end it, and stuck a "thriller" ending on to get it over with, as well. It wasn't the worst novel I've ever read, by far, but it just didn't hold my interest.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    On the surface, this book is about how one of her daughter's friends came to be drowned in Laurel's pool in the middle of the night. The answer turns out to be both surprisingly mundane and unexpected. But the real story has to do with Laurel's relationship with her sister whose presence in Laurel's life has always been both comforting and disturbing. In the course of trying to figure what happened to the drowned girl, Laurel is forced to accept truths about her sister and her mother and their shared past as a family. Laurel and her sister must both accept the choices that the other has made.Jackson has written an intriguing story, and one that is well-told. The tension builds throughout the book, and is not released until close to the very end. And even though the book would have been sufficient without it, Jackson has given us a very satisfying epilogue that in some ways has stuck with me more than the entire rest of the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Laurel has seen ghosts for most of he life, starting in childhood with being able to see her uncle's ampulated foot still on his leg and most recently with the ghost of her daughter's friend, recently drowned in Laurel's swimming pool.While everyone believes that this is nothing more than a tragic end to some teenage prank Laurel is convinced that something more sinister has happened to Molly. With the help of her wild sister Thalia she begins to investigate a creepy neighbour, Molly's family and her own daughter to find out the truth. But what she discovers during the investigations puts both her marriage and daughter Shelby's life in danger and takes her from her rich, gated neighbourhood in Florida back to her families roots in poor DeLop, Alabama for a shocking conclusion.I very much enjoy Joshilyn Jackson's books and although this one was not my favourite of hers I was still gripped by the story and the characters and raced through the book.A new book from this author is always a reason to break into the book budget and this was no exception. Now I can't wait for her next one.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A ghost, a drowning, family secrets. Will the family survive intact? I found this one easy to put down; took me a while to finish it.