Astrid Hawk
Read for First Reads June 2026. Meh. It was fine, I suppose - not particularly memorable, and just enough of a "mystery" to hold interest. That said, the mystery is pretty predictable, and the setup for our main character to even start investigating feels pretty contrived (her boss sends her to go clean out his dead great uncle's house, without telling her how he even knows anything about her history... uh... ok...).
The main character in the modern timeline actually spends a large percentage of her page-time cleaning houses, which isn't particularly exciting to read about - her high school friend owns a cleaning company, and there is a lot of description of the laundry, the vacuuming, getting cleaning supplies for the business, picking up trash on the floor, sorting papers, etc etc etc. They never seem to eat anything except hamburgers, and her friend is pretty infuriating as a character, particularly later in the book when we learn how well her business is (not) going.
I don't mind a split timeline book, but I wish this one had been a tad more immersive in the historical timeline. The historical story takes place during World War II and follows an Austrian woman escaping both Nazi-controlled Austria and her abusive husband on a ship bound for New York City. I had a hard time imagining the scenes on the ship though - this wasn't an ocean liner like Titanic, and it wasn't a cargo ship either... but it was hard to imagine exactly what it would have been like with the little description we got. It was also weird having the historical perspective for the Austrian woman be first-person - but with flawless modern English for her inner thoughts. It seems like a 3rd person narrator would have felt less jarring.
There is a bit of a romance subplot in this one, which fortunately doesn't take the headline until the last 50 or so pages, but it was pretty obvious from the start that it was going to be there. I didn't love it, and I don't think it was necessary. (Also, it was just so tropey and borderline cringey... mid-twenties girl just got out of a bad marriage and is being confronted by some traumatic memories from her teen years, and attractive conveniently un-partnered guy from her past just happens to be in town and happy to help her through it.)
This may sound nitpicky, but I was incredibly annoyed by the way SCUBA diving is presented in this book. It reminded me a lot of the issues I had with The Amalfi Curse last year, which had some similarities in that the main character is the daughter of a professional diver, dove all the time with her parent as a teenager and has tons of experience, but a rookie mistake in the past caused trauma that comes back in the book (and when the scenarios are described, they're not really believable given the amount of experience these divers are supposed to have). In this book, the author actually makes the mistake of describing dives in terms of numbers and specifics. At one point, a guy panics on a dive and surfaces after being down for about 20 minutes without telling his divemaster. When questioned about his depth, he said he was diving at 150 ft (and he didn't even make it to the final depth of the dive). The rest of his group, which presumably did make it to the final depth, was down there for an hour. Practices and standards vary by dive organization/certification, but most recreational dives are under 100 ft, and even with advanced certification, rec divers wouldn't be diving below safety limits of 120 ft (and the dive time would likely be limited).
There is NO WAY even an independent dive operator would take clients (experienced or not) on a recreational wreck dive, on standard air, below 120 feet, and certainly not for an hour. To get to that depth the dive would be considered technical diving, on specialized air mixtures with specialized training. (But wrecks found off the Outer Banks are between 90 and 120 feet anyway, so why would these guys need to go deeper than 150?) And if the guy had actually been at 150 ft for 20 minutes and surfaced without a safety stop or without the slow ascent required, he would have been showing symptoms of nitrogen poisoning. He would have been in pretty bad shape.
The lack of basic fact-checking on the diving portions of the book made me question the fact-checking on historical portions as well. Overall, I'd say don't read the book if you're looking for a good realistic story with historical elements... be willing to suspend some disbelief for this.
Read for First Reads June 2026. Meh. It was fine, I suppose - not particularly memorable, and just enough of a "mystery" to hold interest. That said, the mystery is pretty predictable, and the setup for our main character to even start investigating feels pretty contrived (her boss sends her to go clean out his dead great uncle's house, without telling her how he even knows anything about her history... uh... ok...).
The main character in the modern timeline actually spends a large percentage of her page-time cleaning houses, which isn't particularly exciting to read about - her high school friend owns a cleaning company, and there is a lot of description of the laundry, the vacuuming, getting cleaning supplies for the business, picking up trash on the floor, sorting papers, etc etc etc. They never seem to eat anything except hamburgers, and her friend is pretty infuriating as a character, particularly later in the book when we learn how well her business is (not) going.
I don't mind a split timeline book, but I wish this one had been a tad more immersive in the historical timeline. The historical story takes place during World War II and follows an Austrian woman escaping both Nazi-controlled Austria and her abusive husband on a ship bound for New York City. I had a hard time imagining the scenes on the ship though - this wasn't an ocean liner like Titanic, and it wasn't a cargo ship either... but it was hard to imagine exactly what it would have been like with the little description we got. It was also weird having the historical perspective for the Austrian woman be first-person - but with flawless modern English for her inner thoughts. It seems like a 3rd person narrator would have felt less jarring.
There is a bit of a romance subplot in this one, which fortunately doesn't take the headline until the last 50 or so pages, but it was pretty obvious from the start that it was going to be there. I didn't love it, and I don't think it was necessary. (Also, it was just so tropey and borderline cringey... mid-twenties girl just got out of a bad marriage and is being confronted by some traumatic memories from her teen years, and attractive conveniently un-partnered guy from her past just happens to be in town and happy to help her through it.)
This may sound nitpicky, but I was incredibly annoyed by the way SCUBA diving is presented in this book. It reminded me a lot of the issues I had with The Amalfi Curse last year, which had some similarities in that the main character is the daughter of a professional diver, dove all the time with her parent as a teenager and has tons of experience, but a rookie mistake in the past caused trauma that comes back in the book (and when the scenarios are described, they're not really believable given the amount of experience these divers are supposed to have). In this book, the author actually makes the mistake of describing dives in terms of numbers and specifics. At one point, a guy panics on a dive and surfaces after being down for about 20 minutes without telling his divemaster. When questioned about his depth, he said he was diving at 150 ft (and he didn't even make it to the final depth of the dive). The rest of his group, which presumably did make it to the final depth, was down there for an hour. Practices and standards vary by dive organization/certification, but most recreational dives are under 100 ft, and even with advanced certification, rec divers wouldn't be diving below safety limits of 120 ft (and the dive time would likely be limited).
There is NO WAY even an independent dive operator would take clients (experienced or not) on a recreational wreck dive, on standard air, below 120 feet, and certainly not for an hour. To get to that depth the dive would be considered technical diving, on specialized air mixtures with specialized training. (But wrecks found off the Outer Banks are between 90 and 120 feet anyway, so why would these guys need to go deeper than 150?) And if the guy had actually been at 150 ft for 20 minutes and surfaced without a safety stop or without the slow ascent required, he would have been showing symptoms of nitrogen poisoning. He would have been in pretty bad shape.
The lack of basic fact-checking on the diving portions of the book made me question the fact-checking on historical portions as well. Overall, I'd say don't read the book if you're looking for a good realistic story with historical elements... be willing to suspend some disbelief for this.