Book Review: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

Description:Laurel Grey Hawthorn has everything she wanted out of life. She has a husband who loves her (I mean who cares that he spends most of his time closeted away in the basement working) and a daughter who is happy and healthy. Laurel has done a lot to move past her own growing up experiences and is finally at a happy place.

Laurel hasn't told her husband everything. She sees dead people. When she is woken up from a deep sleep only to find a dead teen leading her to her body in the Laurel's pool. Laurel is forced to ask her sister for help. Laurel believes that she her sister is stronger than her in so many ways. Thalia is different then her but she has her own ideas on what is right and wrong. Can they face their past and their fears before anything else bad happens in their lives?

Thoughts:Isn't it amazing how the things that you experienced cloud your judgment or make you believe that something is a certain way when it isn't? How we can live in our own little isolated world thinking that we are interacting and seeing how things truly are - but then someone enters that world and throws things for a loop. You realize that some of the things you believed are not even close to being true.

How you can be someone who wants to open someones eyes to what is going on around them - but what really you are doing is projecting your own thoughts and feelings on the situation into their lives.

For me this book was a bit of an eye opener in terms of how we all do things like that. We believe the worst in people based on our own experiences. We believe the best in people for the same reasons. We try to protect those around us from the evils that we think might be out to get them. Only they can really know what is going on in their lives and how it affects them and makes them feel.

The other theme for me in this book is embracing your past - where you come from. Good or bad it shapes who we are. Returning and confronting that past can only help you.

I definitely enjoyed this book and thought it was a great summer read.

What genre would you consider this?
Family Dynamics

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