Title: THE RISING TIDE
Author: Sam Lloyd
Publisher: Bantam Press
Read: April 2021
Expected publication: 8 July 2021
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!
Book Description:
Life can change in a heartbeat.
Lucy has everything she could wish for: a beautiful home high on the clifftops
above the Devon coast, a devoted husband and two beloved children.
Then one morning, time stops. Their family yacht is recovered, abandoned far
out at sea. Lucy's husband is nowhere to be found and as the seconds tick by,
she begins to wonder - what if he was the one who took the boat? And if so,
where is he now?
As a once-in-a-generation storm frustrates the rescue operation, Lucy pieces
together what happened onboard. And then she makes a fresh discovery. One that
plunges her into a nightmare more shocking than any she could ever have
imagined . . .
My musings:
WOAH! Now that was intense! After that pulse
pounding finale I’d better sit and catch my breath for a while, and collect my
thoughts. Make sure to enter this thriller willing to leave all your
preconceptions at the door, because they will be challenged in this dark,
terrifying race against time.
But let’s start at the beginning,
shall I? Lucy and Daniel Locke are a happy couple living with their two
children in a small seaside community on the treacherous Cornish coast. Both
are people of the sea – Daniel owns a marine business together with his old
childhood mate, and Lucy has built up a successful food venue in a town that
relies on both fishing as well as tourism. Their beautiful home overlooks the
ocean that is an integral part of their existence, and their life seems idyllic
to any stranger peering in through the windows. Until the day one of Lucy’s
friends and employees comes running up to her house to inform her that their
boat has been found drifting out to sea, abandoned. And Lucy’s world comes crashing
down ....
Sam Lloyd is an author who is new to
me, but it didn’t take me long to find out that he is an absolute master at
creating a claustrophobic, atmospheric background on which he will paint his
terrifying, pulse pounding thriller. Step 1: describe an idyllic seaside
village that instantly makes everyone want to pack up on go there on holidays.
Step 2: there is a monster storm brewing in the distance. Step 3: a missing
husband, missing children and a race against all the forces of nature in the
faint hope that you will see your loved ones alive again. This was not a story
for the faint of heart! As the black storm clouds gathered on the horizon, the
dark secrets also came out of the town’s cracks and crevices, putting
absolutely everything you had come to believe under scrutiny. I read most of
the story with my white knuckles shoved in my mouth, hardly daring to breathe
as the drama unfolded.
A real psychological thriller is one that makes me constantly doubt everything and everyone, even my own perception of reality, and Sam Lloyd manages this seemingly effortlessly by making all his characters somewhat unreliable, even the setting, which unleashed a terrifying force of nature onto its hapless inhabitants. This, people, is how you create unbearable tension! As much as I loved Lucy and my heart bled for her, I also never fully trusted her. I had so many theories as the story unfolded, and yet found myself tapping in the dark for most of it. My only comfort is that it took seasoned detective DI Abraham Rose quite some time to get on the right trail as well, and even if he wasn’t the world’s most stable of characters himself, he was at least able to follow the clues much better than I could.
Summary:
All in all, THE RISING TIDE will appeal to readers
who love a claustrophobic, atmospheric setting but prefer an action packed
story to a slow-burning mystery. If you are looking for fast-paced, then you
have come to the right place, as this adrenaline-fuelled finale will leave you
gasping for air. My only advice is that
you allow enough time to read this book in one sitting, as it’s impossible to
put down once the dark clouds of impending doom start appearing on the horizon.
This definitely made it onto my favourites list and I can’t wait to read more
from this author in future!
Thank
you to Netgalley and Bantam Press for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment