The Girl Who Stopped Swimming Book Cover

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming


A General Fiction Novel


Subgenres:

  • Southern Fiction,
  • Family Secrets,
  • Ghost Story
Buy from Amazon

Read Sample

This book is for you if you're into...

  • Haunted Southern suburbia with secrets bubbling under the surface
  • Sisters with messy pasts forced to confront family skeletons
  • Ghostly mysteries that unravel perfect facades
Publisher Description

A Southern woman's picture perfect life begins to unravel when a body is found in her swimming pool in this novel from a New York Times–bestselling author.

Laurel Gray Hawthorne hasn't seen a ghost in the thirteen years she and her husband have lived in their beautiful gated community. Then, in the dog days of a Florida August, she wakes to find Molly, her daughter's best friend, standing by her bed, who then leads her to her own small body floating lifelessly in the Hawthornes' pool. Laurel's carefully constructed existence cracks, and the past seeps through.

Laurel and her sister, Thalia, grew up in what looked like a typical blue-collar home. But the Grays have long been hiding a skeleton in their closet. While Laurel built her "perfect" life, Thalia became an actress with a capital A, a woman who doesn't fit in Laurel's tidy world. Now Molly can't rest until someone learns her secrets. Laurel turns to her sister, and together they begin a journey that will unearth their family's history, the true state of Laurel's marriage, and what really happened to Molly.

Author Image with Joshilyn Jackson

I call (my writing), “Weirdo Fiction with a Shot of Southern Gothic Influence for Smart People Who Can Catch the Nuances but Who Like Narrative Drive, and Who Have a Sense of Humor but Who Are Willing to Go Down to Dark Places.”

More Joshilyn Jackson

Follow This Author

Sign up & we'll email you when a new title is available for pre-order or hits the bookshelf

Little Stacks of Modern & Literary Fiction

Get Free & Discounted eBooks

Curated reads, irresistible prices—subscribe now

Add this book to your To Be Read list

Sign up to build your personal library

Archive This Book

Sign up to build your personal library