Learning to Swim

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: “If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. But I didn’t, and I saw something fall from the rear deck of the opposite ferry: a small, wide-eyed human face, in one tiny frozen moment, as it plummeted toward the water.”

When she sees what looks like a child tumbling from a ferry into frigid Lake Champlain, Troy Chance dives in without thinking. When she gets the child to shore she discovers that his name is Paul, he speaks only French—and no one seems to be looking for him.

Her determination to protect Paul pulls Troy from her quiet life in a small Adirondack town into an unfamiliar world of wealth and privilege in Canada and then in Vermont. Her attachment to him—and the danger she faces show more when she tries to unravel the mystery of his abandonment—force her to evaluate everything she thought true about herself.

Sara J. Henry's riveting, award-winning debut will keep readers engrossed right up to its shattering conclusion.

My Review: This book is not oversold by its jacket copy. I was indeed riveted. The melodramatic ending wasn't a surprise, but it was *intensely* satisfying. Shattering, well...ya know, in a very basic sense, yes. I cannot in any part of me comprehend the actions of the perp in this story. I was so outraged and so lividly furiously angry at the perp for doing what was done, that the Big Reveal Moment (while not a surprise) had me hopping from foot to foot with a desire to hurt and kill and then resurrect and hurt and kill the perp some more.

Any more would be spoilering.

Sara Henry did a fine job making the book an intense emotional experience. That is a LOT to say of a debut novelist. But she also made me feel about six hundred years old...in a late chapter, she mentions "the OLD TV show Sliders and goes on to explain the premise of the "old" show.

Old. The Nineties are old? They were yester-goddam-day! OLD is when my late mother was young! The Twenties! That's OLD.

I'm gonna go rock in my chair and eat Farina for supper now.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

1. Supposing you'd just rescued a child from drowning, would you:
a) take the kid home to live with you? or,
b) take the child to the nearest police station or hospital? or,
c) call 911?

2. If that child told you he had been kidnapped, would you:
a) suspect the father because you'd read a newspaper article once about a guy who faked his child's kidnapping to get rid of him? or,
b) call the police?

3. If you suspected someone of kidnapping and murder, would you:
a) go visit them so you can intuit whether or not they might be dangerous? or,
b) call the police already?

3. If you were a wealthy business man whose son had been kidnapped, but was now returned to you, although the kidnappers were still free and knew your son might be able to identify show more them, would you:
a) wait a week after his return, then head to Home Depot for some new window latches? or,
b) have already had an expensive security system professionally installed?

4. If you made out with a guy, and there were *ahem* indications that he really got into it, when that same guy suddenly kissed you passionately a few days later would you:
a) be surprised because you thought he had liked you like a sister? or,
b) not be surprised at all, really?

5. If you were the owner of a successful marketing business generating millions of dollars, would you:
a) need help with basic computer tasks? or,
b) be proficient at the systems you needed to run your company and have a computer guy on the payroll for the other stuff?

6. If the father of the kidnapped child asked you to come live with them in their home in another city for a while would you:
a) move right on in immediately?
b) consider visiting when work is less busy and your own obligations allow? or
c) think that is more than a little odd and decline politely?

7. If you discovered emails from a guy's murdered wife in on her computer that might shed light on her final movements, would you:
a) email the people who had written her since her disappearance pretending to be her? or,
b) let the husband know about them, especially since you and he are sometimes making out, even though it always kinda surprises you?
c) seriously, the police exist for a reason!

If you answered a) to the above questions, congratulations! You're the author of this book! In this book, Troy, the main character rescues a six-year-old she sees thrown from a ferry as it moves past the ferry she's on. She jumps in and rescues him, swimming back to shore. Then she decides that it might be his parents who threw him off of the ferry. Later, after he's moved in to her house, he tells her he was kidnapped. And then a thriller of sorts ensues, driven mainly by the utter, utter stupidity of the main character and unlikely plot twists that were nonetheless entirely predictable. All secondary characters exist only to help Troy out when she needs it, at which point they no longer need to be bothered with. Also, there's lots of stating the obvious, demonstrating areas the author researched and enough padding to make a decent quilt. Avoid this one. show less

I have no idea why this book has so many good reviews. It thoroughly annoyed me. I will say that I "read" it as an audio book, so maybe part of my annoyance is with the narrator (who sounds way too stuffy and grandmotherly than the character is). But, beyond that, the writing itself was like nails on a chalkboard to me. Just atrocious. There are so many inane digressions. You should play a drinking game of taking a shot every time she detours to describe the food she's eating. Seriously, you will be drunk in 10 minutes. Do I really need to know that the character puts chunky peanut butter in her oatmeal? Do I need to hear about the "drippings" (gag) of her bean burger? JUST GET ON WITH IT. Even if you took out the unnecessary show more descriptions (seriously, the book would be 25 pages shorter without the food stuff alone), the story drags out SO SLOWLY. Again, maybe the narration was just too slow for me on the audio version, but I don't think that's solely to blame. I was literally rolling my eyes as I listened, thinking, "GET TO THE POINT." It didn't help that I had the "mystery" figured out about halfway through. I found the main character extremely unbelievable. It's all like a Twilight Zone episode. I would have respected this more if it turned out to actually BE a Twilight Zone episode. As it is, it's a dull, terribly unlikely and unexciting plot with some sappy, cliched romance thrown in. The main character says, describing the lame "twist" at the end, "This is like a scene from a bad detective novel." Um, yes, EXACTLY. I couldn't get into this at all. It was truly painful. show less

This is a combination review for both of Sara J. Henry’s books featuring Troy Chance “Learning to Swim” and “A Cold and Lonely Place”. I am combining them because after reading the second book (Cold and Lonely) this weekend – I rushed to get the first book (Learning to Swim) and read both of them within about 48 hours. And even though I’d read them out of order (and the second book heavily references the first) – it didn’t matter. I was absolutely hooked by the author’s style and by her main character.

Troy Chance is an extremely interesting character. Much of the choices she’s made in her life regarding her job, how far she chooses to live away from her family and her relationship status seem to make her seem like show more somewhat of a loner. When she reflects upon these choices, it seems as if she thinks that to be the case as well. But at the core of her, the reader discovers, the problem is not that she doesn’t care about other people, it is that she cares too much. Troy is incredibly empathetic without being overly emotional. She connects with the people she meets and the people she encounters in these two books in a way that I found very compelling. She makes their lives, their problems her own – and has a very difficult time when it comes time to break away.

Several times in each book, Troy finds she has information that she can choose to give to a person whom it will greatly impact. She wrestles with the choices, and with the results. “Sometimes letting the truth out lets people heal, and sometimes it makes things worse. And you couldn’t really know which, until you did it, and sometimes only later.”

I almost couldn’t put these books down. Not only was I drawn to this interesting main character and to the plots of the books – author Sara J. Henry’s writing style just washed over me. Her prose is clean, uncluttered and yet is still descriptive enough to pull the reader into the places and events as if they were actually there.

These were well-written, interesting and at times suspenseful novels that I enjoyed a great deal. I’m hopeful I don’t have to wait too long for another Troy Chance book! show less

Can a ferry ride change the direction of your life? For Troy Chance, it did. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something fall into the freezing water and has a feeling it is something she needs to rescue. She jumps in and swims toward the bundle, only to discover it is a little boy. Troy swims her hardest to get to shore to save his life; once they are safe, she decides to take the boy home. She is afraid to turn him over to the police because she doesn't want him to be in foster care, or worse, go back to someone who may have tried to kill him. She begins to find out details from the boy, and discovers he and his mother had been kidnapped, and he fears his mother is dead. Troy investigates further and learns who the boy's father show more is, and makes a decision: she loves this little boy, and she will do what is in her power to protect him. This story is so contrived, it is ridiculous. Too many pieces fall into place too easily, and there is really no climax. It just kind of goes along at the same pace, with not much happening. The opening scene with Troy jumping into freezing water to save something she isn't even sure is a person is too far-fetched; who does that? And it just keeps going in that vein from there. There was one twist at the end that surprised me, though had I been paying more attention, I probably would have noticed something was coming. If someone would have told me what had happened at the end of this book, I would have quit reading; as it is, I am not sure why I finished. I didn't like the characters, everything happened too easily, and everything (except the one twist) was easy to see coming. And, since I am all about titles, I guess this title is a metaphor since it didn't have much to do with the actual events in the story. Learning to Swim must mean the main character learning to deal with her life, but in the end, I am not sure she does. show less

On a misty evening Troy Chance is standing on the deck of a ferry crossing Lake Champlain. Watching a second ferry carrying passengers in the opposite direction she sees something fall overboard. At the last moment before it hits the water she is positive she saw frightened eyes in the dark bundle. Without a second thought she dives off the deck of the ferry into the frigid water to try and find what she was almost certain was a child.

This book held my interest from the first paragraph. There was not one page that made me want to stop reading and skip ahead to “get back to the story”. No wasted words. No ongoing pages of floral descriptions. The writing was conversational, easy to read and the story kept moving pleasurably. Learning show more to Swim is an apt title for this work because the plot certainly had the reader riding a wave that kept building throughout the book. Admittedly, I did suspect the ending before I finished the book, but not until the very last second before, with a whisper, it was revealed. Until that point the tension kept building.

On a more personal note, there were a few touches that made this a really enjoyable book for me. The chapters were a comfortable length, no 30 pages chapters, so if I had to put the book down (for silly things like sleep and work) I could comfortably read to the end of a chapter before stopping. Part of the book took place in Ottawa and Ms. Henry does include some iconic Canadian things like Tim Horton’s, The Great Canadian Bagel, etc. and that made the book fun for me as a reader.

I loved Troy Chance, with all her foibles, flaws, independence, intelligence, determination and compassion she was a wonderful character. This is a fantastic first book from Ms. Henry and I am looking forward to another, hopefully, soon. show less

Writers of mystery and detective fiction must pull their readers in from the first word, then artfully and patiently seduce us into caring about the characters and (most of all) caring what happens next. Sara J. Henry's debut novel Learning to Swim mostly succeeds, but it also asks its reader to indulge a variety of weaknesses, the most glaring of which are some careless writing and plot contrivances that are not always plausible and/or convincing. Troy Chance is a physically fit young woman who makes an independent living as a freelance writer in Lake Placid, New York. While traveling on the Lake Champlain ferry from Burlington, Vermont to Port Kent, New York she is watching another ferry pass by in the opposite direction when she sees show more something drop from the other ferry's deck into the water that she suspects is a child. Making a split-second life-defining decision, she dives into the water, pulls the child to the surface, and swims to shore. No one witnesses the rescue, and Troy's adventure begins: with a child who apparently speaks only French and for whom no one seems to be looking. The ensuing tale involves kidnapping, ransom and murder, and in her pursuit of the perpetrators Troy proves resourceful and persistent, though also at times alarmingly naive. The narrative builds huge momentum in the first section, which, unfortunately, is frittered away in the second section before picking up again in the third. The narrative is first person from Troy's perspective, and her voice is breezy and casual, which seems appropriate given her abhorrence of any kind of formality, but which also means we are treated to a great deal of unnecessary and distracting detail. Troy herself is appealing, an independent-minded and adventurous woman in her early thirties who knows what she likes about herself, and is responsible and self-aware. Other readers have noted that the resolution of the mystery strains credibility. It may be an understatement to say it seems convenient. But by the time the solution is revealed, the reader cares so much about Troy that the climactic scene and aftermath are almost incidental. All that matters is that Troy survives to face her next adventure. Learning to Swim is something of a paradox, a book that fails on some levels and succeeds on others, but which, once you've started, must be read to the very end. show less