The Last Time We Drowned

After enjoying the reads of „Trad Wife“ and „Serial Killer Support Group“ by Saratoga Schaefer, I was curious about this novel. The premise felt interesting to me – it’s an almost classical set-up: a couple of people trapped in a place with no exit, in this case a luxurious yacht turned into a stationary houseboat which then gets hit by a hurricane. I have written about this in another review, I am fascinated (and often repulsed) by influencers and my guilty pleasure is to watch internet drama about them, so that aspect of this novel was very interesting for me. But I didn’t care much about the main character Charlie. I don’t think that she was written intentionally as an unlikeable protagonist (I don’t mind unlikeable protagonists, especially not in thrillers). However, she was complaining so much (in her mind) about her influencer life that I was wondering, why she accepted the job offer by the yacht owner in the first place, to work as an influencer on the boat? But well, okay, people make mistakes or questionable decisions all the time. All of the other characters were in my eyes unlikeable too more or less. So in this novel, there wasn’t a single character I rooted for. There also were some unnecessary repetitions of points which had already been mentioned. The suspenseful part of the novel started too late imho. There were a few hints of something bad going on, but they didn’t feel that scary, at least, not to me. However, all of that being said, I still enjoyed the read because I wanted to know how the events unfolded and the last quarter of the novel was really suspenseful. And I want to read further books by Saratoga Schaefer. If you are looking for gory and very scary horror like in „Trad Wife“, please note that while this thriller has some scary elements, it’s not really a horror novel.