Reviewed by Emma Crowley
The day Heather, Niamh and Lauren met, they promised to be best friends for life, and that instant connection only grew stronger with their weekly sunrise swims in their stunning local lake. When they left school, they agreed that, no matter where life took them, every year on midsummer’s dawn, they would meet at their old spot and swim together.
Now, fifteen years later, the tradition has disappeared in the face of life’s realities. In fact, they don’t speak any more – not since that night . . .
But this summer, they find themselves back in their Irish hometown and realise this could be their last chance to recapture what they have lost. Will their return to sunrise swimming heal each of them, and help them rekindle the friendships they once treasured?
Book Challenge: #24in24 24 countries in 2024: Book Nine - Ireland
Many thanks to Avon Books UK via NetGalley for my copy of The Sunrise Swimming Society to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Sunrise Swimming Society is the latest book from Irish author Rosie Hannigan. I haven’t gotten round to reading her debut yet but it is edging ever closer to the top of my TBR pile. This is a story of friends and family. How we can be so close but then pulled apart but we can always be reunited if we are willing for this to be the case. It’s a relaxing and gentle read, perhaps a little too slow in places and maybe a little over long also but as this is only the author’s second book there was a sense of her settling into her writing pattern and rhythm and making things a bit tighter can come in future books. I think the author has great potential and we definitely need more Irish women authors on the writing scene as there doesn’t seem to be as many as there was in the heyday of Maeve Binchy and Emma Hannigan for example. The setting throughout is fabulous and there is a real sense of time and place and how important one’s home and family are. I liked the fact it was told in a duel timeline format dipping back and forth between the past and present. Although, I would say I preferred the present day setting but fully understood the need to explore the past. It afforded a means of understanding how the three women had come to know each other and how their friendship had developed and then subsequently splintered.
Lough Caragh means the lake of beloved friendship and once for Niamh, Heather and Lauren this was certainly true as it was the lake and of course Rosemary (Lauren’s grandmother) that united them at the beginning of their secondary school journey. Learning to swim and then spending hours in the lake afforded the girls an opportunity to get to know one another deeply. They became everything to each other and specifically at every solstice both summer and winter they would gather in the early morning sunrise and swim in the lake. This became a sacred ritual to them and Rosemary. Any negativity was washed away, and their intentions were set for the rest of the year. But something caused the friendship to shatter and splinter and for many years the girls now women have not laid eyes on each other nor spoken one word. Considering how close they had been, telling each other their problems, experiencing the ups and downs of being a teenager and sharing the good times and the bad what could possibly have caused their estrangement? I had high hopes that it would be something exciting, juicy and thrilling.
In the present day, Niamh has always remained in Lough Caragh and is married to Evan. She had gotten pregnant at 18 and now has three children. She really could do with something in her life changing as she feels she is in a rut of looking after the children, even though they are now teenagers, with days where everything is just repetition of the same old same old. She thinks it’s impossible for herself and Evan to get back to where they once where and he underappreciates her and everything she does. They have drifted far apart but as she swims in Lough Caragh on the winter solstice she receives a sense of hope and renewal as the lake provides her with a sanctuary and time to think. She really wants to take a new step in her life as the children have some independence now but that’s not to say the home can run itself and Evan wants another baby and this is certainly not in Niamh’s plans.
Niamh came across as being fed up and at a cross roads in her life. Having had her children so young she didn’t perhaps get to travel and gain the life experiences that she may have wished for. Were her wings curtailed a little bit and now was she regretting it? Given the pressure from Evan to commit to another child would she only be stuck to the house once again? This leaves her feeling, sad, heartbroken and alone and all I wanted her to do was be brave and say what she felt as she did have great plans of her own. I doubted had she the inner strength to do this as she was fragile and vulnerable. Niamh notices that Lauren and Heather seemed to have returned to the village. But is their return permeant or fleeting and what has brought them back considering their fallout all those years ago? All the easy laughter, crazy jokes and sharing and kindness they had, meant so much to her and as so much water has passed under the bridge can there be a chance for forgiveness? Or will continue to keep away from each other?
Out of the three women that feature, in my mind, Lauren was the best formed character and she was very well written. He returns to Lough Caragh to try and sort out Rosemary’s house now that she has recently passed away. Rosemary’s absence is keenly felt and Lauren recollects all the wonderful times she shared with her and her best friends on the lake. All that is gone now but is there a chance for a reconciliation with Niamh and Heather? Lauren is a teacher, living in Dublin and married to Shane but she is taking time out to rest and recover from trauma. The details of which I will not go into suffice to say it forms a strong part of her storyline and many women will find her really relatable and most definitely feel for her.
She is shattered and vulnerable and is considering a major decision that would wrench her world in two even further. I thought the portrayal of Niamh and her state of mind was very well done. She was pushing so many people away and I could see why she was doing this but I didn’t think she was in the right headspace to make such a monumental decision. As we learn more about her I believed if she went ahead with what she was planning she would deeply regret it. She is in a dark place with things disintegrating around her and if Niamh and Heather had been by her side and the fracturing of their friendship hadn’t occurred maybe she would have dealt with things better.
As for Heather, I thought she was the most stand offish of the three. She had made a life for herself outside of Lake Caragh and had never wanted to return. She is a social media influencer with her own travel blog and is back to review a local hotel. We slowly start to learn of her childhood and how difficult it was growing up with the parents she had. How this in turn affected the way she was viewed in the village. She was made to feel small and insignificant and all she ever wished for was a normal life with order and consistency. Her parents made her feel as if she didn’t matter so meeting Niamh, Lauren and Rosemary gave her a form of escape from her unsettled child and from being a parent to parents.
Heather was forced to take on responsibilities that no one of her age should have had to and now in the present day she is eaten up by anger, bitterness and resentment. She didn’t come across as being a happy person at all. Someone who had broken free of the shackles and was now happy and comfortable in their own skin having put the past behind them. Instead, it was the exact opposite. I felt she was prickly and unapproachable and the chip on her shoulder would take time to wear down and as her head was in such a state this was starting to affect her relationships. Until she could truly let go of the past both in relation to her parents and the reason for the fallout out between herself, Niamh and Lauren there was no way Heather was moving forward any time soon.
Overall, I did enjoy The Sunrise Swimming Society and as previously mentioned the author has great potential but for me it was just missing that little something to turn it into an excellent read rather than a very good one. For me, the reveal fell flat given thee had been so much mystery surrounding the estrangement of the three women. It felt anti-climatic given they had feuded for so long. I wanted the cause of their friendship separation to be something big and dramatic but it was a bit of a let down and their reunion too needed more passion and tumult. Saying all this makes it sound like this wasn’t a book for me but really I did enjoy it and these are just a few observations. I think it would make the ideal holiday read as it is a book that you can dip in and out of and never feel lost as to what is happening in the plot. I’ll certainly make sure to read book one, The Moonlight Gardening Club and whatever Rosie Hannigan may write in the future because I feel she is only on the cusp of what she can achieve with her stories.
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