Swimming at Night

Summary

In this dark, gripping debut novel of family, secrets, and loss, a young woman travels the globe to retrace the final months of her sister’s life, searching for answers about her death.

Katie’s world is shattered by the news that her headstrong and bohemian younger sister, Mia, has been found dead at the bottom of a cliff in Bali. The authorities say that Mia jumped—that her death was a suicide.

Although they hadn’t spoken to one another since Mia suddenly left on an around-the-world trip six months earlier, Katie refuses to accept that her sister would take her own life. Distraught that they never made peace, Katie leaves behind her orderly, sheltered life in London and embarks on a journey to find the truth. With only the entries of Mia’s tattered travel journal as her guide, Katie retraces the last few months of her sister’s life, and—page by page, country by country—begins to uncover the mystery surrounding her death.

Weaving together the exotic settings and suspenseful twists of Alex Garland’s The Beach with a powerful tale of familial love in the spirit of Rosamund Lupton’s Sister, Swimming at Night is a fast-paced, accomplished, and gripping debut.