REVIEW: I just finished The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon last night. For some reason I didn’t realize that the genre is Horror Fiction. I don’t usually read horror but, I have to admit this book was really good. I spent the whole day reading because my allergies were bothering me and this book held my interests and entertained me. Can’t ask for better than that! 

The characters were flawed and believable. There were so many good ones in this story. I especially liked the Dr and his wife who grew to believe in the healing power of the springs. 

It does cover a couple different time periods which I loved. The current time period takes place over the week Jax was home for the death of her sister Lexie. It wasn’t so much of a horror it scared you out of your wits but it was believable. I liked that and I could fall into the folk lore about the swimming pool fed by a natural spring. 

If you like horror stories (or not) that can make you believe, you might want to take a chance on this one. I recommend stepping into the unknown with The Drowning Kind. 

I received a copy of this book from the author/publisher and Netgalley for a fair and honest review. Thank you for the experience. 

SYNOPSIS: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Invited and The Winter People comes a chilling new novel about a woman who returns to the old family home after her sister mysteriously drowns in its swimming pool…but she’s not the pool’s only victim.

Be careful what you wish for.

When social worker Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister, Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. And as she dives deeper into the research herself, she discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined.

In 1929, thirty-seven-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. In an effort to distract her, her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the Northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the water is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.

A haunting, twisty, and compulsively readable thrill ride from the author who Chris Bohjalian has dubbed the “literary descendant of Shirley Jackson,” The Drowning Kind is a modern-day ghost story that illuminates how the past, though sometimes forgotten, is never really far behind us.