The Pools by E. Lockhart – Our Review

Our Review… I adored this novel. Hauntingly beautiful and deeply romantic, it swept me away from the very first pages. There is something utterly enchanting about E. Lockhart’s storytelling, a lyrical, dreamlike quality that makes the extraordinary feel tenderly, achingly real. Lexie arrives in Covington with her beloved, wonderfully quirky younger sister, Orly, and their mother, who is suffering from a strange malady, layered with depression. Hoping the fabled healing waters might ease her mother’s chronic pain, Lexie dares to believe in their magic. Everyone swims in the pools, and it is there that she meets the charismatic Chester. Their connection is instantaneous, almost otherworldly, as if the universe has briefly conspired to bring them together. For the first time, Lexie feels she might be enough…but the magic of the waters has a darker side, and Chester is transformed. With the quiet, unquestioning logic of a fairy tale and an exquisite tenderness for the human heart, Lockhart transforms the improbable into something profoundly moving. This is a story of love and longing, loss and transformation, and the extraordinary ways we search for healing and belonging. Lockhart doesn’t call herself a poet, author of the powerful We Were Liars, now on Netflix, instead, she describes herself as “a storyteller who hijacks a number of the poet’s tools”- line breaks, internal rhyme, rhythm and repetition, to create something quite magical in prose. However, I was completely captivated. A strange, luminous and deeply romantic novel that will leave you aching a little, believing in magic a little more, and carrying its beauty with you long after the final page. Review by Nicole @ Great Escape Books