Beautiful, haunting recount of trip of lifetime for four friends that ended in terror and survival.

I thought this book was great! I really enjoyed it though I have never read any of her books before. If she continues to write this well then I will continue to read her.

This was a great summer beach book! I read it while on a girls only vacation and it was perfect bc it is set during a girls only vacation. I couldn't put it down. Thrilling! I think it will be a very long time before I ever get on a boat. ( )

A week-long trip on a luxury yacht seems to be a perfect summer vacation get-away for friends Olivia, Holly, Tracey and Tracey's teen daughter, Cammie. Olivia has just returned from Italy after the death of her much older husband and the friends hope the trip will help Olivia deal with her recent loss. On board the women are pampered by Captain Lenny and his helper, the young and handsome Michel. Cammie and Michel are instantly attracted to one another and begin a tentative romance. Their innocent flirting lead to tragedy when Michel becomes distracted and one disaster leads to another. Suddenly the four women are alone on board a disabled yacht and lost at sea. Holly is deathly ill following an injury sustained during an earlier diving excursion. Olivia shows herself to be useless in a crisis as well as a spoiled and selfish woman. Tracey and Cammie try everything they can to keep the 4 women safe which they manage fairly well until their vessel is boarded by three dangerous drug runners. Can the women survive nature's threats as well as those posed by the frightening men?

Although this story took a while to get rolling once it did it was quite suspenseful. The four women are well-developed characters and even the backgrounds of Lenny and Michel are fleshed-out fairly well. Surprisingly I was nearly brought to tears by some of the events but I enjoyed the story very much.
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I listened to this on audio and while it wasn't the best book I've ever read, nor the worse, it kept my interest. I found myself wondering whether or not the four would be rescued, hoping they would be, and speculating on how they might be found. The scenes with the pirates were very well done, suspenseful, and among the best in the book (I thought the outcome would be different.) Also, I know very little about boats and sailing, but it seemed as if Mitchard either did considerable research into nautical life or has been around boats previously, as these details seemed authentic to me.

The ending (August) was a disappointment, as it seemed incredibly contrived and too "neat." Some of the plot was predictable (the storyline with Olivia/Tracy/Cammie) and Cammie's beauty and youthfulness was described in excess, but this was a good "don't-need-to-think-too-hard" type of read. Kiersten Potter, the narrator of the audiobook, was wonderful. There are quite a few characters introduced early on in this book and Potter did an excellent job with various voices which helps greatly with the listener's ability to keep them all straight. ( )