Will Dean (1)

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“Adrift” had me feeling all kinds of things, but not always in that twisty Will Dean way I’ve come to expect. I’ve loved so many of his standalones, so I was buckled in for a five-star thrill ride. This one didn’t quite hit the same, but once I settled in, I was reeled in—especially on the audiobook.

This book is a pressure cooker, and you can practically hear the lid rattling. Picture a mother and son stuck on a shabby canal boat with a guy who should come with a show more warning label. Drew isn’t the fun love-to-hate villain—he’s the kind of toxic that makes you want to reach into the pages and toss him overboard in chapter one. He’s smug, controlling, and convinced he’s the smartest person in every room. I didn’t love to hate him. I just hated him.

Peggy is the pulse of this whole story. She’s fighting to keep her son safe while navigating a guy who can twist any word she says. There were so many moments that made me want to throw my phone and earbuds across the room, but I’ll zip my lips on spoilers. Trust me, this one’s best if you dive in blind.

Slow burns aren’t my jam, and I definitely felt the drag here. The canal setting oozes atmosphere and that delicious, creeping claustrophobia. The tension bubbles up from both the past and the present. When the twist finally landed, I spotted the breadcrumbs, but it still managed to smack me in the face.

I walked away feeling like this was four stars. Not my favorite, but still an unsettling ride with some standout moments that made me glad I stuck with it.

Mostly, I was just hoping to see Drew get what he had coming to him! show less

It's fall 1994, somewhere in the Illinois-Indiana-Kentucky tristate area. Peggy Augusta Jenkins has no birth certificate. She lives with her husband Drew and their fourteen-year-old son Samson on a forty-year-old narrowboat called the Lady Brett Ashley, moored at Robertson's Marina on the canal. The move was Drew's idea — he's a once-celebrated author, his debut novel winning an award years ago, and not a single success since. He convinced Peggy to sell her late mother's home to fund this show more fresh start, this creative solitude. What he told her and what is actually happening are two very different things. Drew controls every aspect of family life — money, food, heat, water, schedules, even how loud they're allowed to speak. Peggy volunteers at the local library in secret and has been quietly working on her own novel. Samson is fourteen, bullied relentlessly at school for his size and his family's poverty, and desperately trying to understand the world he's trapped in.
When Peggy's writing starts gaining real attention, Drew's jealousy metastasizes into something uglier and more dangerous. He moves the boat further and further from civilization, tightening the isolation with every mile. The opening prologue shows fifteen-year-old Drew in 1973 burning his parents alive — so the reader knows exactly what Drew is capable of long before the family does. The novel alternates between Peggy and Samson's perspectives, building a portrait of coercive control so precise it functions almost as a case study. Published February 2026.

[May contain spoilers]
As the boat drifts further from any help, Drew's gaslighting escalates until Peggy finally reaches her breaking point — setting off a catastrophic sequence of events that the novel has been building toward since page one. The ending is devastating and hard-won rather than neatly resolved. The claustrophobia is physical as well as psychological — the damp smell of the boat, the cold, the rationed everything — and the writing is deliberately spare and suffocating. Drew's literary jealousy driving him to isolate the family further is particularly chilling.
What I think: This is harrowing domestic abuse fiction handled with devastating precision — the narrowboat setting creates a physical trap that mirrors the psychological one perfectly, and both Peggy and Samson are drawn with heartbreaking depth. It's not propulsive thriller territory so much as slow-building dread that gets under your skin and stays there. It will absolutely wreck you. show less

Her husband calls her Jane. But that is not her name and she is his captive.

She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she looks, there is space. But she is trapped. No one knows how she got to the UK: no one knows she is there. Visitors rarely come to the farm; if they do, she is never seen.

Her husband records her every movement during the day. If he doesn't like what he sees, she is punished.
For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something show more has changed. She has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting for a chance to escape from him.

Oh my goodness! This book is so amazingly written. I felt like I was right there watching it all happen in front of my eyes.

This is a truly powerful story of a Vietnamese immigrant, Thanh Dao, who along with her sister had illegally entered into the UK with a hope for better future.

But once in UK, she is sold to Lenn who hold her captive. He has taken everything away from her including her name and identity. She has few of her possessions which are her only reminder and connection she has to her family, but Lenn systematically destroys one of them each time she defines any of his rules or orders.
Lenn also keeps on threatening of ensuring her sister being deported but informing the authorities, so as to make sure that she will not try to escape and will always stay, cook for him and never do anything that would upset him.

Reading of the emotional and physical abuse that Jane had to face was really agonizing, but at the same time I was able to appreciate and admire her love towards her sister and the extent she would go endure any torture so as to ensure that her sister is safe and has a better life.

Through Jane’s story, the author has been able to highlight and cover a very delicate but important issue of human trafficking that exists in the society in detailed and empathic manner.

Overall, an excellent book which will be on my mind for a very long time!

Thank You NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for this ARC! show less

This is a sad, tense domestic thriller. I hated basically every second of it. Some books are hard to read because they're poorly written, some are hard to read because they're devastatingly good at it. I think this is in the second category. It’s relentless. There were a couple of moments where I dared to hope it might pivot and let in a little light, it didn't. It is committed to staying horrible until the end. The writing is clear and deeply immersive, and I say that with zero warmth, show more it's a trap. I felt a profound dissatisfaction with life in every chapter, the kind that made me want to set the book down and do literally anything else. The emotional and physical violence in this book wore me down. The characters have so little that their despair feels entirely earned. I was more surprised that they kept putting one foot in front of the other for each other than I would have been if they'd given up. Thematically, it’s about the crushing weight of survival under impossible circumstances and what people endure, what they absorb, and what it costs them to keep going for the people they love. Some readers have the emotional grit to sit in that darkness and come out feeling something valuable. I am not one of them.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for access to this book. show less