January 1, 2022
Kenna Ward gave up surfing when her boyfriend drowned, but she returns to an isolated beach in Australia when her best friend announces that she is engaged to a true surfing fanatic. Soon, members of the beach's tightly bonded surfer chums start disappearing, and Kenna decides she's got to get in the water and ride the waves to discover what's happening. Reynolds debuted with the high-profile, LJ-starred Shiver.
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July 4, 2022
Kenna, the principal narrator of this disappointing thriller from Reynolds (Shiver), has traveled from her native U.K. to Sydney, Australia, to surprise her estranged best friend, Mikki, who’s about to get married. Though Mikki doesn’t welcome Kenna’s arrival, she invites Kenna to join her and her fiancé, Jack, on a pre-wedding surfing trip to a remote beach on Sorrow Bay. The two friends were passionate surfers until Kenna’s boyfriend drowned while visiting a Cornish beach with her. The traumatized Kenna’s ceasing to participate in the sport marked the start of their estrangement. Kenna’s hopes to reconnect with Mikki are threatened, though, by her misgivings about Jack and the Tribe, the community the couple belong to at the bay, whose members resent that Kenna, an outsider, now knows their secret surfing spot. Kenna begins to fear that darker secrets, possibly connected to a number of missing people, are behind the antagonism, a suspicion strengthened when Tribe members turn up dead. The early disclosure of a key reveal undercuts the tension, and genuine surprises and plausible characters are in short supply. This misfire won’t win Reynolds any new fans. Agent: Kate Burke, Blake Friedmann Literary (U.K.).
Starred review from July 1, 2022
Surf's up! Reynolds (Shiver, 2021) swaps snowboards for surfboards in her second novel. Kenna Ward takes a surprise trip to Australia to celebrate best-friend Mikki's sudden engagement. However, Mikki is not as excited about the wedding as Kenna had assumed. She agrees to go surfing with Mikki in hopes that it will provide more time to persuade Mikki to return home. At Sorrow Bay, Kenna is introduced to The Tribe, seven surfers who stake their claim on ""the swell"" and disapprove of outsiders. The rules are simple: tell nobody anything outside the group but share everything inside it. However, Kenna is suspicious that Mikki's friends are hiding secrets. They admit to surfing with a missing German backpacker. What do they know about her disappearance? Kenna begins to question her safety during dangerous initiations, and then some of the surfers mysteriously wind up dead. Whom can she trust? Is there a murderer among them? This fast-paced, suspenseful thriller with undertones of Survivor contrasts an idyllic landscape with its savage inhabitants. Reynolds explores themes of xenophobia, power, intimidation, and treacherous obsessions. In a place where "Fear is fuel, and panic is lethal," the twists and turns keep readers guessing until the end. Recommend this to fans of Ruth Ware, Lucy Foley, and Sarah Goodwin.
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July 1, 2022
Surf's up! Reynolds (Shiver, 2021) swaps snowboards for surfboards in her second novel. Kenna Ward takes a surprise trip to Australia to celebrate best-friend Mikki's sudden engagement. However, Mikki is not as excited about the wedding as Kenna had assumed. She agrees to go surfing with Mikki in hopes that it will provide more time to persuade Mikki to return home. At Sorrow Bay, Kenna is introduced to The Tribe, seven surfers who stake their claim on ""the swell"" and disapprove of outsiders. The rules are simple: tell nobody anything outside the group but share everything inside it. However, Kenna is suspicious that Mikki's friends are hiding secrets. They admit to surfing with a missing German backpacker. What do they know about her disappearance? Kenna begins to question her safety during dangerous initiations, and then some of the surfers mysteriously wind up dead. Whom can she trust? Is there a murderer among them? This fast-paced, suspenseful thriller with undertones of Survivor contrasts an idyllic landscape with its savage inhabitants. Reynolds explores themes of xenophobia, power, intimidation, and treacherous obsessions. In a place where "Fear is fuel, and panic is lethal," the twists and turns keep readers guessing until the end. Recommend this to fans of Ruth Ware, Lucy Foley, and Sarah Goodwin.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from June 1, 2022
The author of Shiver (2021) moves from the mountains to the beach as a passionate surfer finds herself caught in a deadly adventure. As this psychological thriller opens, sports therapist Kenna Ward flies into Sydney from her home in England, determined to rescue her best friend, Mikki, from her new fiance, Jack: Kenna hasn't met Jack, but from what she's gathered long-distance from Mikki, she's convinced that he's overly controlling and possibly abusive. Her concern is only to be expected--after all, Mikki and Kenna's friendship dates back to their early schooldays when they were both surf-mad and shared adventures together, and Mikki's engagement to Jack was awfully sudden. But Kenna's plans to investigate Jack take an unexpected turn when he and Mikki whisk her off to their secret hideaway, a remote beach in a semiabandoned national park, where they hang out with a motley crew of buddies known as the Tribe. Victor, Ryan, Clemente, and Sky all hail from various spots across the globe, and each one totes emotional baggage, whether it's ongoing PTSD from a surfing wipeout or struggles with opiate addiction after a damaging accident. Together, as a team ("Fear is fuel....Panic is lethal!" is their motto), they spend their days surfing and egging each other on with trust exercises and supercompetitive tasks, testing their physical and mental boundaries in the ocean and on the nearby cliff and rocks. But not all is well in this surfers' paradise, a no-holds-barred tropical pleasure spot despite the mosquitoes, ants, jellyfish, bats, and snakes. Kenna's got her own challenge to overcome--she lost someone close to her two years earlier and hasn't quite recovered. And then there's the sinister undercurrent of a plot around missing backpackers. Who, you wonder, will manage to survive? An exhilarating, adrenaline-filled tale of surfing and rock scrambling.
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