The Resort: A Novel
by Sara Ochs
Sourcebooks Landmark
Mystery & Thrillers
General Fiction (Adult) | Mystery & Thrillers
Pub Date 06 Feb 2024
DESCRIPTION/SYNOPSIS:
For readers of Rachel Hawkins and We Were Never Here comes a searing vacation thriller set on a remote island in Thailand following two mysterious women, a charismatic group of expats, and the one murder poised to bring their paradise crashing down.
Welcome to paradise. We hope you survive your stay…
There are three rules to survive a dive at the famous Koh Sang Resort
1 – Breathe normally if something goes wrong. Scuba diving instructor Cass leads her students out for their first dive off the beautiful coast of Koh Sang, Thailand’s world-famous party island. It’s supposed to be a life-changing experience, but things quickly spiral out of control…
2 – Always dive with someone you trust. By the time she’s back on the shore, Lucy, one of her students, is dead, another critically injured, and she knows the new and idyllic life she has built herself is about to be smashed to pieces on the rocks.
3 – Don’t panic if your oxygen is running out. Because someone has discovered Cass’s dark secret, and on an island as remote as this, there aren’t many places to hide. There is a killer waiting, and whoever it is will stop at nothing until Cass’s life is ruined and justice is finally served.
REVIEW:
Some secrets are deadly. The Resort comes with a cast of characters who are self-described castoffs and loners seeking a second chance or at least a fresh start on the party island of Koh Sang in Thailand. What they have in common has brought them together, but the secrets some of them harbor could tear their new lives apart. The narrative alternates between two POV characters, Cass, a scuba diving instructor on the island, and the latest member of the group, Brooke, an Instagram influencer who’s sponsors subsidize her itinerant lifestyle. Brooke is still in the process of insinuating herself into the group of expats calling themselves the Permanents when Lucy, a tourist visiting the island, is found dead, likely murdered. The local police force, however, seems unwilling to entertain the possibility of foul play, possibly due to a payoff by the resort’s owner, despite the recent and suspicious death of another young woman that was, nevertheless, deemed a suicide. Before long, Brooke and Cass — the one Permanent most accepting of the social media savvy newcomer — begin their own amateur investigation of Lucy’s death.
In her POV, Cass reveals some of her own secret, involving the death of her sister and father, though the details are scarce; while Brooke’s POV reveals she isn’t as successful in her social media influencer role as she would like people to believe, and that she’s struggling to make ends meet. Even less is revealed about the secrets of the rest of the Permanents. And perhaps too much of 3/4 of the book revolves around investigative speculation and general introspection by these two semi-reliable narrators for the story to slip into the flow of a page-turning thriller. Much like the scuba divers at the resort, the plot spends a bit too much time treading water without generating much forward progress. The final quarter of the novel, however, bursts into hardcore thriller mode, during a destructive island storm when buried secrets and hidden motivations finally rise to the surface and boil over with unexpected menace and murderous betrayals.
Note: I received a free eGalley of The Resort from Net Galley in consideration of an unbiased review.
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