The Cruise
A glamorous New Year's Eve cruise turns deadly when a dancer vanishes without a trace, leaving behind a ship full of suspects. Weeks later, the decommissioned vessel becomes a floating graveyard as the isolated skeleton crew begins to disappear. Isolated at sea with nowhere to run, who is hunting them down, and who will survive?
- Lola - Dancer
- Antonio - Dancer
- Alice - Chef, Lola’s friend
- Stuart - Doctor
- Nico - CEO of Heracles
- Leo - Captain of Immanis
- Laura (Real name Anna) - Teenager
- Ellie - Social worker
- Oaks - Police Constable
- Karen - Anna’s mother
- Jesse - Anna’s brother
- Michael - Jesse and Anna’s birth father
- Fred - Boy Laura likes
- Daniel Johnson (real name Andrew Mugton) - Anna’s abductor, Laura’s ‘father’
- Michael wins a trip on Immanis but when he steps into the hot tub in his suite he is electrocuted and dies.
- Part One
- 2022: Lola cannot be located after a passenger reports seeing someone fall overboard.
- Two weeks later, Immanis is docked for a scheduled two month lay-up.
- Eight years earlier: A teenage girl wakes up in the hospital but doesn’t remember who she is.
- The doctor tells her they think she was hit by a car.
- Police find her father, but he killed himself.
- They tell her that her real name is Anna and she was abducted when she was four.
- The girl remembers that her name is Laura.
- Laura goes to live with Karen and Jesse.
- Their father left shortly after Laura was taken.
- Present: Rick is found dead.
- PC Oaks tells Laura and Karen that Daniel’s real name was Andrew and that he kidnapped Anna after his wife and daughter, Laura, died in a car accident.
- Jesse spends a lot of time with Laura and is very protective of her.
- An autopsy shows Rick was suffocated with a pillow.
- 2013: Laura starts sneaking out to see Fred, and he gives her a phone so they can text.
- Laura runs away from home when her father catches her with Fred, and she gets hit by a car.
- 2016: Laura turns eighteen and decides to dance on cruise ships so she can see the world. Jesse wants to go with her.
- They decide on stage names: Lola and Antonio.
- Lola returns and tells Antonio/Jesse that she was hiding out onboard all along and never went overboard.
- Lola convinced Rick to help fake her death by throwing a paper mache woman they made overboard and pretending that she wanted to be free from Antonio’s controlling ways and be with Rick.
- Afterwards, Lola drugged and killed Rick because she blames him for losing her father.
- Rick is Fred, and Lola believes that if Fred had never lured her away from her life, her father wouldn’t have killed himself.
- Stuart tells Antonio that DNA on Rick’s body shows it was from a close relative of Antonio’s.
- Antonio freaks out, smashes Stuart on the head with a statue.
- Lola tells him to take Stuart’s body and put it in the macerator.
- Antonio smuggles Lola off the ship in a holdall.
- 1999: When Karen was on her deathbed, she told Laura that her birth father, Michael, was the one who hit and killed Andrew’s wife and child.
- Michael was driving drunk, but they told police that Karen was driving.
- After Anna was kidnapped, no one could find Andrew, and everyone assumed he had killed himself from the grief of losing his family.
- Lola becomes very angry, especially when Karen says Jesse knew, and didn’t tell Lola.
- Present: Lola goes to live on St. Tibuda under a new identity.
- After Jesse receives Lola’s life insurance money and splits it with her, Lola drugs him and writes a suicide note for him confessing to Stuart and Rick’s murders.
- Lola is the one who tracked down Michael, paid for his trip on Immanis and rigged his hot tub to electrocute him.
The premise of this story pulled me in with the promise of a tense New Year’s Eve celebration at sea, but the actual execution delivered something different. I went in expecting a full-blown cruise atmosphere, but only about half the narrative actually takes place on the ship and the holiday is totally irrelevant, only briefly mentioned a few times. It felt a bit deceptive since the title sets you up for a confined mystery on the water. The story jumps around a lot in both time and place, shifting between several different points of view. Aside from the lack of a full cruise ship setting, it was still a solid and entertaining read. Catherine Cooper’s writing is sharp, and the short chapters keep the pacing brisk enough to power through some chaotic timeline shifts. The story holds its own once you let go of the initial expectations and just ride out the mystery. The twists land exactly how you want them to, and the ending wraps up all those scattered threads in a satisfying way.
If you like shifting perspectives, isolated settings, and multiple timelines, then you will enjoy this book.
- Michael - Dead - Electrocuted in a hot tub in a murder orchestrated by Lola
- Rick - Dead - Suffocated by Lola
- Daniel/Andrew - Dead - Suicide
- Karen - Dead - Cancer
- Stuart - Dead - Bludgeoned to death by Antonio
- Jesse/Antonio - Dead - Poisoned by Lola
- Lola/Laura/Anna - Alive - Pleased that she got revenge on everyone she blames for her father Andrew’s death
- Suicide
- Death
- Rape
- Car accident
- Kidnapping
- Murder
ISBN: 9780008497293
Publication Date: February 14, 2023
Note: Details are for the original edition. Other formats, editions, and audiobook versions may be available.
