My #1 New Year's resolution?
To actually use the Kindle that has sat at the bottom of my closet shelf for the past four months and find books to replace my pastime of doom-scrolling on TikTok.
With a hardly touched TikTok app and five completed books in 2026, I decided to stray from my recent obsession with Stephen King novels and download Lucy Clarke's newly released psychological thriller, "The Castaways." The book's over 7,000 five-star reviews on Goodreads helped solidify my choice.
However, a week and 416 pages later, there's only one word I can use to describe the book: mediocre.
The book opens with two English sisters, Lori and Erin, who were set to board a flight to Limaji, a luxury island in the archipelago, from an airport in Fiji. A promising beginning — after all, who doesn't love a tropical setting?
Switching between Lori’s “then” and Erin's “now” chapters, I was quickly transported back-and-forth in time from two years ago when Lori took off from the Fiji airport, and in real-time, with Erin struggling to grasp the disappearance of flight FJ209, the same flight her sister boarded alone.
Erin's chapters, which were filled with her grief-ridden drinking problems and clear hatred for her journalist job in London, dragged on without any clue as to what happened to her sister and why Erin didn't board the plane with her to begin with.
Every time I saw the name “Erin” at the beginning of a chapter, I had to mentally prepare myself to reread the next 15 pages over again because I could hardly concentrate on anything except how bored I was with her dialogue.
Despite my annoyance with Erin’s character, I found Lori’s chapters encapsulated the book's genre — thriller — which was the reason I started it in the first place.
From her palpable anxiety as she realizes her sister will leave her to travel alone on a small plane with only seven other passengers, to Lori’s horrific realization that the plane is going to crash, the tension among the passengers kept me reading page after page.
Although the constant changes in point of view and time period between Erin and Lori made it hard to follow the plot, I appreciated being able to read how both sisters were dealing with their respective crises.
After only a few chapters, Erin ends up back in Fiji to continue her obsession with figuring out what happened to her sister, all while promising her boss to write a story about recent developments in the flight disappearance.
Not only does Erin become insufferable as the book progresses, but she also very slowly begins to relive memories of the night before the flight disappeared. Rather than adding to the suspense, this only makes her seem like a liar withholding information that could be critical to the investigation of flight FJ209.
I spent most of my time reading, waiting for Erin to reveal something meaningful or profound to the plot, but she rarely added anything except fluff and depressing millennial clichés:
“I forgot about the microwave lasagna sweating on the kitchen side and eat cereal straight from the box, dry granola showering my chest as I push handfuls into my mouth, eyes on the screen, washed down with gulps of wine.”
As for Lori’s chapters, I became more intrigued as her storyline went on.
Lori single-handedly carried the entire book — a crash landing on a remote island in the Pacific and the tensions that came with being stranded.
Even though there were times when unnecessary love triangles and overly complex plot twists made the island plot feel like a dramatic episode of Love Island, I was impressed by how well Clarke depicted the emotions and the impending doom of the crash survivors.
I truly felt a sense of anxiety for Lori that kept me exhilarated while reading her chapters. From finding food and shelter to living on an island with complete strangers, I was hooked.
However, when I reached page 350, I began to feel as though I was reading the same thing over and over again.
With Erin's constant whining and borderline torturous, complaining behavior — with little to no consequences — as well as Lori’s day-by-day life on the island, the book started to just morph together into one large, predictable ending.
What started as a somewhat promising mystery novel turned into a series of ridiculous plotlines that couldn't end fast enough. Though I was intrigued enough by various parts of the book not to call it quits, this book will only be saved for mindless late-night reads, perfect for falling asleep.
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