The Blue: A Novel by Lucy Clarke *Review*

*I received an ARC of this book for my honest review*

In the tradition of Alex Garland’s The Beach, a spine-tingling adventure novel about a group of friends whose journey around the world on a yacht turns from a trip to paradise into a chilling nightmare when one of them disappears at sea.

A group of friends. 
A yacht. 
And a disappearance-at-sea that turns paradise into a chilling nightmare. 

Lana and her best friend Kitty leave home looking for freedom—and that’s exactly what they find when they are invited onto The Blue, a fifty-foot yacht making its way from the Philippines to New Zealand. The crew is made up of a group of young travelers bitten by wanderlust, and it doesn’t take long for Lana and Kitty’s dream of sea-bound romance to turn into reality.

Both women fall under the hypnotic spell of The Blue, spending their days exploring remote islands and their rum-filled nights relaxing on deck beneath the stars. But when one of their friends disappears overboard after an argument with another crewmember, the dark secrets that brought each of them aboard start to unravel.

Here is a excerpt  :

Lana waits desperately for another news bulletin. She needs to hear exactly what’s happening out on the water—whether the crew have made it to the life raft, whether any of them are injured—but the radio station is playing a soft rock song that comes strumming into her apartment. She paces to the windowsill and snaps off the radio.

She stays by the open window. Outside, the morning light is thin and hazy, a salt breeze drifting into the room. She pushes up onto her tiptoes, peering beyond the tree line to where she can glimpse the sea. It’s one of the reasons she agreed to rent the apartment, with its cracked wooden floorboards and noisy electric heaters that she has to huddle against in the depths of the New Zealand winter to feel any warmth.

Now that summer is on its way, she’s grateful for the wide windows that let the light flood in, as she sets up her easel in front of them so she can paint before work. She’s made a life of sorts here: she has a job, a place to live, an old car. Her days may not be filled with friends and laughter and noise as they once were, but perhaps it’s better this way.

Sometimes she thinks of her father back in England, in his tired terraced house, spending his evenings alone doing the crossword or watching the news. After all those years of riling against his quiet routines, the irony of how her life has taken on the same lonely rhythm as his hasn’t escaped her. She writes to him every couple of months—just brief letters to reassure him that she’s safe—but she never includes her address. She’s still not ready for that.

Lana arrived in New Zealand eight months ago now, stepping from the plane into the start of autumn, shivering in a sun-bleached cotton dress, her salt-matted hair loose over her shoulders. She’d had a backpack on her shoulders and $500 left of her savings.

She’d spent that first night in an Auckland hostel, lying on a bunk with her eyes closed, waiting to feel it sway and shudder. If someone had walked into her dorm, laid a hand on her shoulder, and asked, Are you okay? Has something happened? she would have told them—told them everything: about the canvas backpack thrown from the side of the yacht, drifting in the sea like a body; about how a horizon curves and wavers when there is no land to break it; about the red sarong pooled on the floor of the cabin, soft beneath Lana’s feet; about a kiss in a cave carved from limestone; about how you can look at your best friend and no longer recognize her. But no one had asked. And as the minutes had crept into hours, and the hours stretched through the night, Lana had pushed down each of those memories, sealing them off. 

MY THOUGHTS

I have never heard of Lucy Clarke before but I am always happy to read books by new (to me) authors .  
This book sounded interesting so I couldn't wait to read it.

Yesterday the internet was down and on top of that it was raining so I grabbed this book to read for a bit but ended up reading it all. I just couldn't put it down but I had to put it down to make dinner and eat but I picked it back up as soon as I was able to. It did get my guessing.

The story line was captivating and I could very well imagine everything and all the characters. 

This is a great for fans suspenseful novels and great as a summer read.

I give this 5 out of 5

The Blue: A Novel by Lucy Clarke will be  available on August 11th 2015 online and in stores near you.