Lux and her boyfriend Nico are eking out a poorly-paid, uncomfortable living on Maui after their dream of sailing Nico’s boat, Susannah, across the Pacific was smashed due to damage to the boat which they still can’t afford to put right. The situation is rendered more irritating to Lux since Nico’s family is rich, and if he applied for help from them, the boat could be fixed, and they’d be free to travel. Instead, and after Lux is fired from her room cleaning job at an upmarket resort, the two are hired to take a pair of travellers, Amma and Brittany, to Meroe Island. Lux suggests that, instead of hiring a boat, the price should include fixing the Susannah, and so that’s done and they set off forthwith. Once at the island, a coral atoll which was once a refuelling point in the Pacific theatre of World War II, and which has something of a haunted reputation, the four discover another yacht moored offshore, the Azure Sky, with the wealthy and charming Jake and Eliza on board. The six make friends immediately, but their idyll is disrupted by the arrival of Robbie, who is threatening and transgressive, and the cracks in their paradise begin to widen into rifts.
Hawkins intersperses the straightforward narrative (told in the first person by Lux) with flashbacks to scenes in the lives of the women, and she deftly sows unease with unexpected reactions, and mild gaslighting from not just the men. Brittany and Lux are both struggling with loss of family – Brittany’s in a traffic accident at the hands of drunk driver, Lux’s mother from a lingering death from cancer – and their reactions, in the end, are two sides of the same coin.
Hawkins draws her characters with sympathy and humour, the sudden friendship which springs up between the six visitors seems natural, since there are still some frictions, particularly between Amma and Lux, and Amma and Eliza (though that becomes a lot more understandable when the denouement is revealed). I don’t want to spoil the plot, but I did feel the ending was a little too melodramatic – although, to be fair, I’m not sure how it could have been resolved otherwise – and I’m not sure how much Lux is justified in her actions. That said, Hawkins is righteously indignant about the way that rich people treat poor people; always rising to the top, not caring who they tread on to get there, shielded from real want and care.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable thriller, with its themes of choice (and lack of it), threat, and what we’d do to take revenge on those who’ve harmed us.
