Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Schaitkin's unsettling debut plays with the conventions of the romantic thriller to comment on the uneasy relationship between working-class residents of a fictional island in the Caribbean and the wealthy American tourists who visit it. In 1995, a couple from a New York City suburb and their two daughters, adventurous college freshman Alison and cautious seven-year-old Claire, visit a resort on the island. Alison flirts with two workers at the resort, Clive and Edwin, and takes off with them nightly without her parents' knowledge to visit a local club, where she dances, drinks, and gets high. One night, she doesn't return, and her body is soon found on a nearby island. Though suspicion falls on Clive and Edwin, they are not charged with any crime. In present-day N.Y.C., Claire, who narrates much of the novel, recognizes Clive, now a cab driver, from the back seat of his taxi. Obsessed with learning what happened to Alison, she stalks him while neglecting her work and friends. As Claire embeds herself in Clive's life, he grows increasingly wary, until he finally snaps and reveals what he knows about the final night of Alison's life. As the novel gradually shifts to Clive's point of view, Schaitkin subverts the other characters' assumptions about the lives and intentions of strangers. This is a smart page-turner, both thought-provoking and effortlessly entertaining. Agent: Henry Dunlow, Dunlow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
An affluent American family's perfect Caribbean vacation takes a turn for the unthinkable when their college-aged daughter, Alison, goes missing and is eventually found dead. The family questions the local police's investigation as few suspects are identified and no charges are brought forth. Alison's death is devastating for her seven-year-old sister, Claire, who must navigate her formative years in the wake of tragedy. The loss of her sister, coupled with the lack of closure that accompanies an unsolved death, underscore Claire's life in innumerable ways. Years later Claire will hop into a New York City taxi and realize her driver is one of the main suspects in Alison's murder. Claire seizes her opportunity for the truth and devises a plan to get it. Schaitkin's debut novel is a slowly burning suspense story that feels like it will transform into a frenetic thriller but never quite makes it there. Alternating character perspectives can be a bit difficult to follow, but narration by Alex Hyde-White, Bailey Carr, Dana Dae, Dave Fennoy, Dean Gallagher, Denise Nelson, Ella Turenne, Josh Petersdorf, Kate Orsini, Melinda Wade, Prentice Onayemi, Ron Butler, Ryan Vincent Anderson, and Tristan Wright makes for an immersive listen and helps illuminate the novel's examination of privilege, race, and class. VERDICT Recommended for any fan of suspense, especially those who enjoy a deep dive into characters' emotions and motives.--Sean Kennedy, Univ. of Akron Lib., OH
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The death of a teenage vacationer on a fictional Caribbean island reverberates through many lives, particularly those of her 7-year-old sister and one of the workers at the resort."Look. A girl is walking down the sand.As she walks, heads turnyoung men, openly; older men, more subtly; older women, longingly.This is Alison." A dangerous froth of sexual tension escalates around Alison Thomas, visiting Saint X from the wealthy New York suburbs with her parents and little sister, Claire. Schaitkin evokes her fictional resort with sureness"the long drive lined with perfectly vertical palm trees," "the beach where lounge chairs are arranged in a parabola," the scents of "frangipani and coconut sunscreen and the mild saline of equatorial ocean." After the disaster, the focus shifts to Claire, who changes her name to Emily after her bereaved family moves to California but never escapes the shadow of the event. "I knew the exact day I outlived Alison. Eighteen years, three months, twelve days." When she moves back East for a publishing job in New York City, she crosses paths with one of the resort employees her sister was partying with the night she died. These men were exonerated in the matter of Alison's death, but Clive Richardson was arrested for selling pot in the process; after prison, his life is so devastated that he immigrates to Manhattan. After Emily gets in Clive's taxicab, her obsessive desire to know more about her sister's deathwhich, by now, the reader fully sharesconsumes her life. The complex point of view, shifting among an omniscient narrator, Emily's perspective in first person, Clive's immigrant story in close third, plus brief testimonies from myriad minor characters, works brilliantly. Just as impressive are Schaitkin's unflinching examinations of the roles of race, privilege, and human nature in the long-unfolding tragedy. Setting the story in a fictional place, collaged and verbally photoshopped from real Caribbean settings, is daring, but this writer is fearless, and her gamble pays off.This killer debut is both a thriller with a vivid setting and an insightful study of race, class, and obsession. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
