Review: Swim Deep

TW: sexual abuse


Limecello told me about Swim Deep by Beth Kery months ago with a conversation (widely paraphrased) that consisted of, "It's different and it sounds like your kind of book."  I read the description, which screams Gothic, and that was enough for me to one-click.  Naturally, me being me, I finally got around to reading this February 2019 release in June.

Let's get this out of the way up front, this isn't an erotic romance - which is the sub genre Kery is known for.  This is an amalgamation of Gothic, romance, suspense, and women's fiction and for that reason it starts out rather bumpy.  This was most definitely a second half book for me once the plot starts to bubble over.

Anna Solas is a young, beautiful starving artist working two jobs.  She meets and falls fast for the older, more worldly Evan Halifax, a hedge fund manager who sweeps her off her feet, marries her after a whirlwind courtship and takes her to live in his magnificent, fortress-like home in Lake Tahoe.  The home he inherited from his dead first wife, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, who naturally casts a long shadow, died in a drowning, whose body was never recovered.

If you're passingly familiar with Gothics you'll kind of know what happens next.  Evan isn't all that he seems, his lies by omission start to unravel, and Anna, secluded up in the mountains doesn't know who to trust.  The plot is a solid one and even though I knew one character was not all that they seemed, Kery does a good job of building suspense, throwing in misdirection and leaving the reader questioning what they *think* they know.

But (and yes, there's a but...), it's kind of a lumpy read.  The beginning is like getting thrown into the deep end of the pool with the expectation that the reader already knows who these characters are.  You don't.  I spent the first third of this book asking myself, "Who are these people? Why should I care about them? I don't think I do care about them..."  To be honest the only things that kept me from setting aside this book in the early chapters were Limecello recommended it to me, and it's a Gothic.  I'm achingly nostalgic toward Gothics to the point where I give them a lot of rope before throwing in the towel.

And I'm glad I did.  Because after a while I got a better handle on the characters and the pacing picks up on the plot.  There were definitely times I wanted Anna to be smarter, to be less trusting, but then we wouldn't have too much of a book and she makes up for it in the end.

There are certainly problematic elements to this story though, and the mix of Gothic, romance, suspense and women's fiction did make the story feel unfocused at times.  Sexual abuse is a driving force behind the suspense and when a secreted away box of sex toys and recordings are found there's an uncomfortable correlation with depravity (it's in between the lines, but I felt like it was there).  This will be a deal breaker for some readers, and likely not register at all for others.  It wasn't necessarily a deal breaker for me, but it did cause me to squirm in my seat.

This book ended up being a bit of a mixed bag for me.  Uneven is probably the best way to describe it.  There were parts I enjoyed, but I'm not sure enough to make up for the lumpy beginning, slow character development, and problematic elements. Evan does something over the course of this story that was a bridge too far for me, but it helps tremendously that Kery doesn't try to do too much with the ending when it comes to the romance.  However, it's a Gothic and on that score, it worked for me - and reminded me a bit of the more lurid sounding Gothics that were turned out during the height of the pulp era.  Depending on your nostalgia for Gothics and/or your fandom for Kery's work, your mileage may vary.

Final Grade = B-