The Lifeguards

A Novel

By: Amanda Eyre Ward

Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Marin Ireland, Kirby Heyborne, Karissa Vacker

Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

“A book that is at once riveting and relevant as it unpeels the various meanings of motherhood, family, and loyalty. I tore through it.” (Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace)

The bonds between three picture-perfect - but viciously protective - mothers and their close-knit sons are tested during one unforgettable summer in a gripping novel from the New York Times best-selling author of The Jetsetters.

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 15 years, believing that they can shelter them their children from an increasingly dangerous world. Their 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, lifeguards for the summer, 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.

©2022 Amanda Eyre Ward (P)2022 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“A polyphonic story . . . Ward, with her keen eye for detail and a terrific sense of exactly when to deliver a punchline, knows her characters well. . . . She allows her characters to be petty and myopic, to make the wrong choices again and again, to fail badly, then dust themselves off and try again. Her people are resilient, with a deep longing to do better—particularly for their children.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Shake up a margarita and light a citronella; you’ll be in this one for awhile.”—Good Housekeeping

“Ward expertly weaves together each woman’s point of view as well as commentary from entertaining neighborhood listservs, secret text messages, and police reports for one of the first true beach reads of the year.”—E! ONLINE

One of the best books in five years!

I LOVED this story! It builds slowly toward an immensely intricate and surprising ending. Truly well-written an read by multiple narrators! I want more Amanda Eyre Ward!

Extremely superficial.

I went for it because I will listen to anything that Marin Ireland deems worth her time. I have to say, this was the first time I was disappointed. I have never left an audible review, but this was just that disappointing. It was difficult to follow at parts and seemed to be exploiting a number of stereotypes without ever making you like any of the characters in particular. It’s hard to focus on a story where there is no real focus. In just a few hours it attempts to cover addiction, doomsday, pretty much all of the potentially difficult aspects of parenting from the female perspective, all the stereotypes of “bad” male parent figures (absent, overbearing, aggressive, aloof/grieving), classism, racism, ageism… it goes on, but the only thing that it did was inspire me to want to visit Austin. I hate to be so critical, but the narration was so good that I just kept waiting for the story to evolve and capture my interest.

I enjoyed this!

I enjoyed the story but one of the narrators sounds like a robot. Her voice was annoying to listen to. The others were good.

WTF… what happened ???

Would’ve loved an actual ending instead of whatever that junk was… it’s like the author ran out of time and threw the last 3 sub chapters together… would’ve liked to have known what happened to some of the characters

Loved the Austin setting

As a resident of central Austin, I loved the setting and details of this book. It has a creative, quite complicated plot - and I found it interesting and easy to get into. It will be a fun pick for my book club, a group of Austin moms with teenagers.

Um what happened?

Had a really difficult time staying focused on this book. Lost interest about half way through.

What would you do?

Wow! “The Lifeguards” by Amanda Eyre Ward is a story about motherhood and loyalty, and an event that tests the bonds of friendships.

The story is told by three mothers of fifteen-year-old lifeguards, with chapters peppered with the voices of: their teen sons, a recently widowed detective, and the chorus of the “Barton Hills Mamas”, an Austin TX group chat. Barton Hills is an affluent suburb of Austin TX. It’s the summer of 2019 when a college-aged female is found dead near the swimming hole where the boys (lifeguards) work. Through unexpected circumstances, the boys are linked to the death, and these mama-bears lawyer-up. Prior to this summer, the women have enjoyed a tight relationship, to the point that the boys feel that this friendship supersedes everything, including them. Once the boys are under scrutiny, the mothers become fearful for their own boy.

Meanwhile the widowed detective trudges through his new lot of single parenthood. He follows the clues, under pressure to find the reason the girl died.

While I really enjoyed the story, I think Ward tried to cover too many issues: immigration, infertility, alcoholism, trauma, loneliness, estrangement, single-parenting, and queer identity. What I did like was the realistic portrayal of the three mothers. These mothers are recognizable; we’ve all encountered them.

Ward exposes what being a “good” mother means. Given our world with increasingly younger violent offenders, especially regarding gun violence, how do we “protect” our child if they are arrested? Is protecting a child not making that child have meaningful consequences for violent actions? When a mother has a nagging feeling that their child is troubled, is cloaking them being a good mother?

How far would you go if you thought your child could be involved in a crime??

I listened to the audio narrated by Hillary Huber, the amazing Marin Ireland, Kirby Heyborne, and Karissa Vacker. Any project that Ireland works, I know I’ll enjoy!

Fun Read or Listen

This is a fun story with a dark bent. The kind of thing you’d binge watch on Netflix in a day. The lead characters are interesting, if not always true to life (as a mom, I found myself annoyed by many of the mothering choices). Even frequent suspense readers will likely be surprised by the way the central plot unfolds, which is a triumph of its own. The pacing makes it a wonderful choice for consuming in bite size pieces, if you can leave it for long. I would definitely pack it in my vacation bag or enjoy listening to it on a long commute.

Excellent Storyline and Narrated Very Well

I really enjoyed this audiobook! The story was written in such a way as I felt like I was one of the moms!

The narration was excellent. The way the story was read, really brought it to life!

Sunshine!

So many politics, such little content

On a positive note, there is a good chance that you either are, or know someone who is, very similar to one of the relatable main characters. The overall plot was creative & narration was fantastic, however, I feel like more thought and effort was put into political and social statements than the actual story & tying up of lose ends.

This really could have been SO GOOD. And the racial context COULD HAVE been extremely enlightening. But instead, we get to hear 10 hours of self-righteous, “rich white people” profiling, among other politically charged innuendos and statements. I still have so many questions about the story, but no doubt on where the author stands politically and socially.

I wonder if it’s ever occurred to anyone that we are creating self-fulfilling prophecies. The more we tell minority and socioeconomic groups that they are ostracized and alienated, the more they are going into group settings automatically feeling that way, rejecting and pushing people without giving them a chance.

I was at a retreat in Costa Rica last month and didn’t know anyone there… There was a Hispanic woman from my state that I really wanted to talk to, but she put off a very guarded energy and attitude. When I finally got brave enough to approach her, we immediately connected. At some point during the week, she admitted that she has issues with people with “lighter skin than her” because of childhood experiences at a primarily white school, and a belief that white people automatically think they’re better. What’s sad about this is that today is not the same as it was 30 years ago. I understand that those experiences shape you and the way you see the world, but we are just drilling in the message, continuing the cycle.

It’s the same with someone who has less money or grew up poor. I grew up in a small town full of big names with little money and from a dysfunctional home, and I spent my first 30 years of life believing that everyone around me who had more money thought they were better than me. My mom would tell me that all the time. And of course there are people that did & do, but the more I went out into the world believing this, the more people I pushed away. There has to be a better way to inform and persuade continual progress toward social equality than this polarization and pitting one race against another.