Reckless Girls

For lovers of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware, the wonderfully wicked gothic suspense novel, set on an isolated Pacific island with a sinister past, is a New York Times bestselling novel from The Wife Upstairs author.

It looks like the chance of a lifetime when Lux McAllister and her lover, Nico, are recruited to sail two ladies to a secluded island in the South Pacific. After experiencing a family tragedy, Lux is itching to board The Susannah and go on an adventure. He is stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii. Also, she quickly clicks with their passengers, Brittany and Amma, who are best friends from college. The two ladies express a desire to go off the usual route. However, similar to Lux, they could be looking for an escape for different reasons.

After spending days at sea, Meroe Island shimmers on the horizon and, despite its enigmatic past filled with cannibalism, shipwrecks, and even murderous legends, is all the quartet hopes and more of a paradise. They don't anticipate, however, that another yacht will already be docked off Meroe's sandy shores. The Azure Sky's owners, Jake and Eliza, are a picture-perfect couple: elegant, easygoing, and, judging by their sleek catamaran and well stocked bar, wealthy. The group of six new pals settle down to enjoy the tranquility of being totally off the grid as well as island life. Lux hasn't felt really at home anywhere for years, but with these other free spirits here on Meroe, she's at last at peace.

However, the group's equilibrium is upset when a shady stranger who is traveling alone and looking for a darker type of fun shows there. Breaks soon appear: it seems that Brittany and Amma haven't been entirely truthful with Lux about their pasts, and maybe not even with one another. Even while Jake and Eliza look like the ideal couple, their troubled past starts to come to light, and it's possible that they weren't as sincere as they had originally claimed when they set sail for Meroe.

It seems as if the island is closing in on them as it becomes apparent that they are far more isolated from society than they first believed. Lux starts to worry about whether any of them will survive to leave the island after one person goes missing and another comes up dead.