Review Detail

Frances May was aboard the Persephone, a luxury yacht, when it was attacked. She was one of only three people to survive, one of the only people who know the truth about what really happened that night. She’s determined to expose the lies surrounding the Persephone – even if that means taking down the boy she’d fallen in love with and losing who she is in the process.

I wasn’t too sure what to expect going into this book. It sounded like it could be a twisty, surprising, book of revenge that could be addicting to read or it could be more of a bad soap opera. I thought it ended up about in the middle of the two. It wasn’t as twisty as I expected, or the twists were predictable, but it wasn’t soap opera-like as it could have been. There were a lot of times it reminded me of the show Revenge.

Frances was a complicated character, which I liked. I got her reasoning for wanting revenge and for wanting someone to pay for what happened that night, for wanting the truth out there. She lost almost everything in the attack and she was so laser-focused on bringing down the people she was convinced were responsible for the death of her friend. She wasn’t concerned in who she hurt to achieve her goal and there were times when she crossed many lines. There were times when she was pretty unlikeable but everything she did and the way she acted was done with revenge in mind.

I had a hard time with the romance in the book. Frances was fourteen and they knew each other for a week before the attack. The boy, Grey and his father were lying about the attack and she wanted to expose them, but I was supposed to buy into an epic romance between them. I just couldn’t. Even if Grey could somehow, miraculously, redeem himself for lying, they still knew almost nothing about each other.

I liked the flashbacks to Frances’ time on the ship. They showed a little of the beginnings of a romance between her and Grey, something that could have developed into more, they showed parts of the horrific attack, they showed a survival aspect of Frances and her friend Libby. What they went through was terrifying and it showed how strong Frances was to survive. I thought these scenes added a lot of depth to Frances as a character.

The whole book did require a little suspension of disbelief but it was also entertaining in the same vein as watching the show Revenge.