This was such a great thriller read! I always have issues with pacing when it comes to these kinds of books, but I thought this one was just the right amount of slow and quick at the same time! The cover is absolutely gorgeous as well. I love going into thriller/mystery books without knowing much, so I think doing so with this one would also be a smart idea!

Coverage for Frolic can be found here: https://frolic.media/perfect-pairings-books-and-candle-scents/

In Jennifer McMahon’s The Drowning Kind, Jax, a young social worker, finds herself the recipient of several missed calls and long messages from her sister. Lexie sounds like she is off her medication and in the throws of a manic episode. Lexie calls her again and again, leaving voicemails begging Jax to come and join her at Sparrow Crest, the family home Lexie inherited when their grandmother passed away. Jax ignores those calls until she gets one she cannot ignore. Lexie is dead, found floating in Sparrow Crest’s pool, a pool built out of the spring local folklore says can heal.

That pool is at the heart of The Drowning Kind’s other story, that of Ethel, which takes place in the 1920s. She’s a newly wed woman, maybe a little older than other newlyweds. Could have easily become a spinster if not for the love of her life, Doctor Will Monroe. Theirs is a grand love, but neither is getting any younger, and it seems something is missing in their lives, something Ethel will do anything for.

There is a lot to like about this book. The character work is damn near impeccable, with Jax being a fully fleshed-out character. Jax is damn flawed, nowhere near a perfect person. She’s given to jealousy, which is a major thread through this story. Her jealousy towards Lexie is the resentment that only a younger sibling could have towards their elders. Lexie herself is given life through the eyes of Jax and those that knew her, which is very well done. Ethel keeps her pain inside, the anxieties we all face and then some. Even the side characters – Aunt Diane; Jax and Lexie’s father Ted (not Dad, only Ted); and the girl’s friend Ryan – all of them just make sense as people.

The writing works here. The words propel you forward, not holding your hand or shoving the answers down your throat. Nothing too fancy, but it works. McMahon gives you a good mystery, what happened to Lexie in that pool, and what is the secret of that pool that spans generations. We follow the two main characters as they fall victim to that mystery, as they lose themselves to it.

Which brings me to the one flaw I can find, the one thing that kept eating me after I finished this book. See, this is the third book of McMahon’s I’ve read, the other two being The Winter People and The Invited, and while all three are fine books, good little yarns about the spooky things in Vermont, all are very similar. There’s a modern mystery, a modern narrator, and cut through all of them there is a story from olden times informing the modern-day mystery, often told through a diary.

And that’s fine. The author has a format, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s damn near its own genre, I’m sure. I can think of a handful of other books I’ve read this year with a similar trick, but so long as that individual book, regardless of similarities to others in their format, work, does the thing we read scary books for, that’s fine. Right?

Disregarding that little thing there stuck in my craw, I have to admit this is a good read, with plenty of atmosphere and charm. Real scary, no, but there were enough moments there.

Grades:
Overall: 4 Star Rating Cover
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Simon and Schuster Chris Deal Jennifer McMahon

Holy cow WOW, I am mind blown! This book is deliciously dark, creepy, chilling, thrilling, shocking, and Unputdownable!!! It’s the type that’s so well written, it will leave you hungover and with a mind spinning so fast, it’s impossible to slow the thoughts coming through! One in which you can’t WAIT to finish, but also cry when you do! Absolutely chilling to the bone, well written, character flawless, and much more! I think this author might be a new fav! Highly, highly recommend; but must add a warning, do not start unless you have TIME TO FINISH!

Ill buzz around platforms and use low Amazon reviewer number on release date!

Powerful, gut wrenching, beautiful. This book was unlike anything I have ever read before and I can’t wait to recommend it at my library

I believe this is only the second Jennifer McMahon book I have read and I’m not sure why. I will definitely be reading more.

The Drowning Kind is a book about a family mired with secrets and mental illness, it’s also a book about grief and loss that happens to be set at a family estate in small town Vermont that might have a cursed spring on its grounds. Jackie is a child therapist who gets a call that her beloved estranged sister has died unexpectedly at the family home. She returns to Sparrow Crest, heart heavy with grief, to find that maybe something darker is going on there.

The setting of this book is really like a character itself, which I love. You feel like you are there yourself when reading. I like books that have different viewpoints and go back and forth in time, like this book does.

Overall I highly recommend this book if you like books about family drama tinged with the supernatural in a creepy setting.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-arc I received.

Jennifer McMahon has yet to disappoint me. I have read almost all of her books and each one is better than the last. The Drowning Kind was no exception. A very chilling story about sisters, cursed water and how we should definitely be careful of what we wish for.

I’m still not positive that I totally understand what happened in this one, but that’s kind of a good thing in this case. Lexi and Jax are sisters, the X girls they call themselves. Lexi is manic and lives in the family home while Jackie lives her life as a therapist. Jackie has distanced herself from Lexi in order to maintain her peace until she gets the call that Lexi has killed herself and Jax has to face reality and go back to the family home.
In another timeline, it tells the history of the family home and the tragedy that took place there. Maybe LeXi wasn’t so completely wrong and off the wall as everyone thought...

The Drowning Kind was my third Jennifer McMahon book and it did not disappoint! McMahon has this hypnotic, atmospheric style of writing that just keeps you reading. Two stories are presented, the first in 2019, revolving around Jackie, whose sister has just drowned. The second is of Ethel in 1929, a young wife seeking to have a baby. The stories parallel around Brandenburg Springs in Vermont, which is an odd, sulfuric, black ice cold water source that somehow heals and grants wishes to anyone that touches it, but at a severe cost. Whatever it gives you, it takes something else away. Through the story, we learn more about the history of Brandenburg and the secrets it holds in its seemingly haunted waters. I really liked learning about Jackie and Lexie’s friendship as sisters and discovering the history of the Springs. I enjoyed the ending, though it was a little abrupt. While reading, I found it fascinating to consider the lengths we go to in order to save family and sacrifices we are willing to make.

Thank you Gallery Books / Scout Press and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

“Are the Brandenburg Springs cursed? Could they bring great misfortune as well as great healing? For every wish granted is something taken in return? Something to balance the scales?” Many people swear by the healing powers of the Brandenburg Springs, but just as many are extremely frightened by them. There’s something in the water...
Jax ignored the last phone call from her sister Lex, but is devastated when she finds out her sister has drowned in the pool at Sparrow Crest, the home she inherited from her Grandmother, the home with a dark history. When Jax returns to Sparrow Crest to sort through her sisters life, she sees and hears things, things that can’t be real. What happened to Lex that night? Will she be able to put the pieces together soon enough to save herself? The pages turn themselves in this story and the ending is quite a doozy! So creepily good!

Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.

That'll give you pause........

Sparrow Crest has been part of their childhood all their lives. With the passing of their grandmother, the huge house with the deteriorating smile now belongs to Lexie. Grandmother bequeathed it to her including all the grounds and that deep, dark swimming pool fed by the natural spring. Jax, Lexie's sister, felt unsettled because she was left with nothing. A nothing that will eventually become a something.

Jax, a busy social worker based in Seattle, has avoided answering the constant calls and messages from Lexie. Lexie has been diagnosed with manic tendencies and is often off her meds. Jax just doesn't want to deal with her sister and the weight of her problems. They've been estranged for some time. But a new call comes in. It's from her Aunt Diane and the impact of it leaves Jax speechless. Lexie drowned in that pool........Lexie, the champion swimmer of the family. What on earth just happened?

As Jax returns to that house in Vermont, she is being eaten up with guilt. Her father and her aunt try to convince her that Lexie was relentless in leaving notes and scraps of paper with odd numbers and writings. Lexie was onto something that only she could see. And how in the world could her family begin to unravel Lexie's last days?

Jennifer McMahon switches gears to 1929 in New Hampshire to a woman named Ethel Monroe and her doctor husband. They've been fascinated with the restorative benefits of the spring water at an upscale hotel. Simple water does not bring about simple things. And Ethel and Will may come face-to-face with just that.

If you've read any of Jennifer McMahon's books, you know that she tightly winds the creep-o-meter every time. The Drowning Kind is no exception.......especially when our minds and imaginations recall experiences of not being able to touch bottom safely in a body of water. And in particular if that water is dark and murky and contains a rotting smell of something unknowable..

The Drowning Kind is a fast read with high octane intensity. McMahon is a master when it comes to descriptors involving the unexplainable. Even tiny droplets of water or the whimper of a baby's cry can leave you rushing to the next chapter in this one. Just mark this one down as a must read for 2021. Sometimes the jagged pictures formed in your mind leave the McMahon imprint in just the right place.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Simon & Schuster (Gallery Books) and to the talented Jennifer McMahon for the opportunity.

This was a beautifully haunting tale about cursed waters that heal at a price.

Told in two different timelines, we have Jax, a young woman who learns of the drowning death of her mentally unwell sister the day after she attempts to call her multiple times. We also have Ethel in the late 1920's, whom in an attempt to have a child with her husband, Will, uses the so-called healing powers of a certain spring in a Vermont resort to help her achieve this goal.

We learn through an eerie back and forth, the parallels and intersections in these two timelines. Jax is trying to pick up the pieces of her lost sister and all that she missed with her while Ethel is trying to keep the daughter she quite possibly never should have had alive with the healing waters of the spring.

This was scary and sad at the same time. I felt so strongly for Jax. She is trying to make sense of the relationship with her sister Lexie that she threw away. During her stay at the home their grandmother left to Lexie that the sisters spent so much time together in as children, she must come to terms with the ways of the pool they always swam in and the links it had to Lexie's death. She must go through Lexie's documents and research she accumulated before her death in an attempt to find answers.

Meanwhile, we are brought along Ethel's tumultuous journey of trying to keep her child healthy and safe after the waters of the Vermont spring were so beneficial and detrimental at the same time.

I adored the writing of the amazing Jennifer McMahon. She never fails to write stories that speak to what is inside of you. The deepest and darkest longings of a person. This was a truly eerie and haunting story that I was fully immersed in. This will definitely make me think twice when going near lakes or natural springs from now on.

Alternating between past and present, “The Drowning Kind” is the story of one family’s tragic history as it pertains to the Bradenburg springs, which long boasts of incredible healing powers. As folk law touts, this spring of water does not only heal, but it grants wishes, as well, but does so at a very steep cost—“THE WATER DOES NOT GIVE WITHOUT TAKING!”

This creepy, supernatural story shines a spotlight on sisters Jax & Lexie, whose fate has been tied to the Bradenburg springs since childhood. Although mesmerizing from the get-go, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of a let-down at the story’s lackluster ending after such a tantalizing buildup. Still, riding “The Drowning Kind” train was one crazy, eerie ride for sure!

A dark and nuanced novel that demands rereading. Fascinating characters and structure and setting. I love the use of voice in this book.

I love this author and this book did not disappoint. Twisting the past with the present, this book was quite the adventure! A couple page turning moments had me on the edge of my seat. Can’t wait to read her next book.

Creepy tale of family secrets and a haunted pool. Engaging read that kept me guessing. Ending not what I expected.

I have read all of Jennifer's books and have enjoyed them all. This one is a chilling story about a woman who returns to the old family home after her sister mysteriously drowns in its swimming pool. Lexie has been out of touch with reality so Jax is not surprised that something has happened to her sister. Jax arrives at her grandmother's house and learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. Jax discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined.

In 1929, a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the Northeast which eventually becomes the pool on the grandmother's property. The story switches back and forth from 1929 to the present. It is a modern-day ghost story that illuminates how the past certainly has an influence on the present day. I found the characters to be unique and quite interesting. The story did not disappoint and I do look forward to Jennifer's next book. I would recommend this book to those who love ghost stories. Thanks so much to NetGalley and Simon and Shuster for a free copy for an honest review.

Totally original, extremely creepy thriller. When Jax is called home to deal with the death of her estranged sister she must confront her past. Jax and Lexi spent summers at their grandmothers house all through their childhood. Their grandmothers house was huge with a pool that was fed by a natural spring. The pool had a past including several drownings and many creepy events that the girls were witness to. Fast paced and scary, this book was impossible to put down. Exceptional atmospheric thriller.

Jennifer’s books just get better and better. If you love supernatural stories, then this book is a must read. The characters, the plot, everything seemed so believable, even though it was very supernatural. I was pulled into the book immediately and it kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. As I was reading, I tried to figure things out along the way and I got some things right but others not so much! Both storylines are enjoyable and each timeline provides history on the hotel, the estate and Jax and Lexie's family. The book alternates between Jax’s story, and the story of Ethel, ninety years ago. The two timelines intertwine together into a good solid story that will draw the reader in. As Lexie scribbled on a note: "The key to understanding the present is to look at the past." The two main character viewpoints were that of Jax and Ethel Monroe. As the reader gets further into the novel you learn how these two women are related. There were clues scattered throughout the entire story and the tension just builds and builds until the end, which was both satisfying and heartbreaking. I predict that this book is going to be a major hit next Spring and I cannot wait to see what she comes out with next! This is one you don’t want to miss!

The story did go back and forth between differnt era's. It explored a property that had hauntings throught the ages. It was definitly a ghost story adventure and that was riveting till the end. It centered on family and their peculiarities over the years. It ws a very engaging story.

If you are in the mood for a good ole spooky story, then make sure you write this title down and place it on your to-read list.

A deep, black pool is at the center of this narrative and its story is told with enough darkness, malevolence, and odiferous reference to keep you reading until the surprising end. This pool and all the secrets and history it conceals will draw you in as surely as a swimming pool in your town and you won't know the extent of the manipulation until it's too late. Just be careful what you think you really want.....you may get more than you bargained for.

Highly recommended!