Drowning With Others by Linda Keir

3.5 Stars

I believe this book is what they call a slow burner, basically code for lots of fairly useless information being thrown at the reader that isn't really necessary to the plot or the building of the characters but adds a nice touch of verisimilitude to the story.  There is an awful lot of that here - present in large doses in both the present day adult incarnation of The Copelands and in their rarefied, Private School senior year.  It does work, sort of, but it did leave me wishing the editor had been a little heavier handed with the green pen - after all, there are only so many times you can listen to a characters internal angst about the same issue before your brain starts to glaze over.

The premise for the story is a good one.  Twenty or so years ago Ian and Andi where Glenfield Academies star couple, now they still seen as the perfect married couple.  Unfortunately for them they both have secrets buried deep alongside their senior year break up and now what appears to be the corpse of the missing writer in residence, Dallas Walker, has been found it looks like those secrets are not going to stay buried much longer.  Throw in a few adult roadbumps (bad, bad business decision Ian - even I could see the red flags all over that one) in their personal and professional lives and this is definitely NOT a good year to be a Copeland.

Initially the world building is incredibly good but it does start to become bogged down in minutiae.  This is particularly evident when dealing with the flashback periods for Ian and Andi and in Andi's modern day persona.  I found this to be a real shame as the overall story and the convoluted various possibilities for what happened to Dallas are enthralling, well plotted and the telling is, overall, accomplished well.  Just such a pity that it gets derailed by rambling reminiscences of girlhood stomach upsets and womanly business concerns.  Strangely, I found myself wanting to know more about the wider family dynamic - Ian with his wealthy parents who are major contributors to Glenfield Academy and transplanted Californian Andi and her Hollywood father.  Certainly there are tensions still evident in the social schism between the two clans and that is one area that I felt didn't get sufficient attention.

On the whole, I found this an absorbing tale where the mystery behind the murder is less important than the lives of the people involved.  For me, this was really a tale about moving from adolescence in to adulthood and the pitfalls we don't notice until we are trapped within them.