by: Rachel Hawkins
Goodreads description:
When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail two women to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii, and longing to travel the world after a family tragedy, Lux is eager to climb on board The Susannah and set out on an adventure. She’s also quick to bond with their passengers, college best friends Brittany and Amma. The two women say they want to travel off the beaten path. But like Lux, they may have other reasons to be seeking an escape.
Shimmering on the horizon after days at sea, Meroe Island is every bit the paradise the foursome expects, despite a mysterious history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and even rumors of murder. But what they don’t expect is to discover another boat already anchored off Meroe’s sandy beaches. The owners of the Azure Sky, Jake and Eliza, are a true golden couple: gorgeous, laidback, and if their sleek catamaran and well-stocked bar are any indication, rich. Now a party of six, the new friends settle in to experience life on an exotic island, and the serenity of being completely off the grid. Lux hasn’t felt like she truly belonged anywhere in years, yet here on Meroe, with these fellow free spirits, she finally has a sense of peace.
But with the arrival of a skeevy stranger sailing alone in pursuit of a darker kind of good time, the balance of the group is disrupted. Soon, cracks begin to emerge: it seems that Brittany and Amma haven’t been completely honest with Lux about their pasts––and perhaps not even with each other. And though Jake and Eliza seem like the perfect pair, the rocky history of their relationship begins to resurface, and their reasons for sailing to Meroe might not be as innocent as they first appeared.
When it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilization than they initially thought, it starts to feel like the island itself is closing in on them. And when one person goes missing, and another turns up dead, Lux begins to wonder if any of them are going to make it off the island alive.
Helen says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓
This book is really good! Don’t let the title and book cover fool you. I am a fan of Rachel Hawkins. She has great plot development in all of her books. Holly randomly picked this up in the airport and I am glad she did because it exceeded my expectations. Remember the movie Dead Calm? with Nicole Kidman stuck on a boat in the Pacific? I got the same vibes with this book…eerie and creepy…
Holly says: 🤓🤓🤓3/4
I liked it! Definitely a quick, entertaining, and fast-paced murder mystery. It gets a little confusing, maybe the names were more confusing, maybe the names were more confusing than anything else…Robbie, Jake, Amma, Eliza, Brittany, Lux and Nico. I kept getting confused about who was who and who was in a relationship with who else, but it is a great vacation read…just make sure that vacation is not to Meroe Island – yikes!
Helen and Holly Hit the Books 