A
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
The cover for The Lifeguards is more fitting for a romantic comedy than this twisty, suburban thriller. Reminiscent of Big Little Lies, I think this book is a perfect fit for readers who want suspense and thrills without gore or terror.
Focusing on the inner vs outer lives of three women, The Lifeguards follows Austinites Whitney, Liza and Annette. All three live in the same posh neighborhood and their respective fifteen-year-old boys are close friends, dubbed The Three Musketeers. One night the boys come home late from summer lifeguard duty, panicked and telling their mothers about a dead body they found near a swimming hole. As police investigate the death, they discover the young woman was tied to all three boys.
What follows is an untangling of the women’s lives—and their lies. Whitney has been covering for a deeply troubled child, Annette’s perfect marriage is actually deeply fractured, and Liza isn’t at all who she pretends to be, deeply in debt trying to live a lifestyle she can’t afford.
One of the things that I really enjoyed about this thriller is that while I certainly didn’t agree with the decisions all of the main characters made, or even like all of them, I understood their very human motivations for their actions. There’s no real villain in this book (although there is a killer), but rather a series of terrible choices that lead to tragedy.
The POV flips between each of the women and their sons, who are discovering that their parents aren’t as perfect as they want to believe. I think this is a very real part of being a teen, learning how flawed and human your parents are, and it added a lot of realism to this book.
Readers looking for a lot of twists without a lot of gore, or readers looking for a “secret life of the wealthy” mystery, will definitely appreciate this book. It was a super fun read and I hope the author returns to the genre.
– Elyse
In sunny Austin, Texas, the bonds between three picture-perfect–but viciously protective–mothers and their close-knit sons are tested during one unforgettable summer in The Lifeguards from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters.
“With The Lifeguards, Amanda Eyre Ward brings all the thrills of Big Little Lies to the privileged, sun-dappled private patios of Austin’s ‘rich-mom’ set. The result is a juicy and irresistible roller coaster of a read.”–Allison Lynn, author of The Exiles
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. While each of them has their own set of values and backgrounds, they share the belief that they can shelter their children from an increasingly dangerous world. The women’s three teenaged sons are about to begin a carefree summer as lifeguards. Whitney, Annette, and Liza’s 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 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.
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Thanks!
I am so grateful for this site: I would absolutely have scrolled right past this based on that cover, when in fact it sounds exactly like something I’d like, and this is far from the first time that’s happened. Thank you, SBTB.
On my TBR!
I finished this book bothered by unanswered questions. One being what was done about Roma. Was she just left to wreak havoc? Secondly, and somewhat importantly, what was the deal with perhaps shady “nanny” agency? Why insert the question and leave it totally up in the air?