The Swimming Pool

AUTHOR: Holly LeCraw
PAGES: 320
WEBSITE: http://hollylecraw.com/
TWITTER: @hollylecraw
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Holly LeCraw lives outside of Boston with her husband, who is a journalist, and three kids. Her short fiction and book reviews have appeared in a range of publications, including the
Edge City Review and the Boston Book Review. Her short fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Though a newcomer as a novelist, she grew up in the book industry.
ACQUIRED: ARC courtesy of publisher DOUBLEDAY

SUMMARY: (from book jacket)
Seven summers ago, Marcella Atkinson fell in love with Cecil McClatchey, a married father of two. But on the same night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil's wife was found murdered. The case was never solved, and Cecil died soon after, an uncharged suspect.

Now divorced and estranged from her only daughter, Marcella lives alone, mired in grief and guilt. Meanwhile, Cecil's grown son, Jed, returns to the Cape with his sister for the first time in years. When he finds a woman's bathing suit buried in a closet-a relic, unbeknownst to him, of his father's affair-he decides to confront Marcella on a hunch.

When, to their deep surprise, they fall into an affair of their won, passion temporarily masks their shared pain. But as we are left to believe on the last stunning page, the betrayals of the past cannot be ignored and will have a ripple effect on these two families for years to come.

OPINION:
Holly LeCraw is a mastermind at creating characters. The loneliness, the innocent, the lusting, the betrayed and hurting characters are so well written you can't hate them. You sense what has driven each character to the place they are today and even though you might find some of them morally wrong it is hard to pass judgment on them when you hear how tortured they are within their own minds and how they just long to be punished.
Jed's sister, Callie, I found particularly interesting. She was in college, just as Jed, when she lost her mother. Now with the lose of both parents and the arrival of a new baby, life has just swallowed her whole. This is a character I would normally hate but Holly wrote her so well I could understand her maddening world she was living in.
A book of mystery. Just when every character seems to have gotten their answers and some sort of peace the book takes a twist and nothing is what it seems.
Perfect beach and summer read full of mystery, love, desperation and believable characters.