The Book:
The Lifeguards by Amanda Eyre Ward
Published April 5th 2022 by Ballantine Books
Date read: June 27, 2022
The Characters:
Whitney and her children Xavier and Roma
Annette and her son Robert
Liza and her son Charlie
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Austin’s Zilker Park neighborhood is a wonderland of greenbelt trails, live music, and moms who drink a few too many margaritas. Whitney, Annette, and Liza have grown thick as thieves as they have raised their children together for fifteen years, believing that they can shelter them their children from an increasingly dangerous world. Their friendship is unbreakable–as safe as the neighborhood where they’ve raised their sweet little boys.
Or so they think.
One night, the three women have been enjoying happy hour when their boys, lifeguards for the summer, come back on bicycles from a late-night dip in their favorite swimming hole. The boys share a secret–news that will shatter the perfect world their mothers have so painstakingly created.
Combining three mothers’ points of view in a powerful narrative tale with commentary from entertaining neighborhood listservs, secret text messages, and police reports, The Lifeguards is both a story about the secrets we tell to protect the ones we love and a riveting novel of suspense filled with half-truths and betrayals, fierce love and complicated friendships, and the loss of innocence on one hot summer night.
The Ending:
Whitney had set her daughter Roma up for drug dealing, because she knew Roma was a sociopath who was torturing her brother. It just so happened that one of the people “Roma” was dealing to was Lucy, who was dating Bobcat.
The boys had been at their secret swimming hole when Lucy showed up and passed out in the water. Obviously they knew her, but they had nothing to do with her death.
The Review:
This book certainly was not the lighthearted summer rom-com I expected based on the cover! That’s on me for not reading the summary. Instead of a romance, The Lifeguards is a chick-lit, neighborhood drama mystery surrounding a dead body and what these boys may or may not have to do with it. It felt a lot like May Cobb’s books, both the affluent Texas setting and the light summery murder mystery.
I really enjoy these books where everyone has a secret, and where it turns out that the main mystery is not the most interesting thing to find out about the characters. I’m also a big fan of the mommy drama/affluent neighboorhood setting, complete with catty moms on a message board.
It’s always fun to read about somewhere I’ve been–I’ve swam in Barton Springs and walked along what I believe was the Greenbelt!
While the premise overall was great, the ending felt a little rushed and left me with some unanswered questions. I wasn’t sure why we needed Salvatore’s perspective, and felt like I didn’t know all there was to know about the dead girl.
I enjoyed the author’s writing overall, and am certainly interested in checking out her other books.
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