Thank You Netgalley for the ARC.
I could not get into this book. I DFN'd it almost halfway into it and could not see any reason to go on with the story. I guess it just wasn't for me.

the premise sounded awesome and i was very excited to read this since i absolutely love survival stories, but it felt so ...flat? and i couldn't get past the oh so many mistakes, so that's kind of a no from me

If you can ignore the many, many typos, misspellings, missing words, and misused words, Bill Bunn’s Out on the Drink is an engaging, unique tale which follows young alcoholic Sean on his biggest, dumbest blunder yet. In the middle of Newfoundland snow storm, he accepts a dare to climb aboard an abandoned cruise ship, where he promptly passes out and awakens much later to find that the ship has torn aware from its moorings and is adrift on the ocean.

Sean must learn not only how to live without alcohol, but how to live alone on a decrepit ship with little water and food that expired almost three years prior to his misadventure. His very survival depends on it.

Bunn did a nice job with the pacing of the story. Sean’s stint aboard the Lyubov Orlova slows the momentum a bit, but I think that was intentional to show how long Sean is stuck aboard the cruise ship and how lonely he is during this time. The pace definitely picks up again when company comes aboard.

The story is original and engaging. Despite Sean’s many stupid mistakes, I found myself hoping he and his ship-imposed sobriety would both survive. I recommend this book despite the many errors.

This is a tale of survival....from the clutches of a severely dysfunctional family, to being stranded at sea. At times this was hard to stomach, but ultimately hard to put down. Not your average adventure tale....

Out on the Drink,
By Bill Bunn

Bill Bunn’s latest book, ‘Out on the Drink’ has an intriguing premise. On a dare, an alcoholic teen climbs onto an abandoned Russian cruise liner docked late one night. He’s so drunk he passes out, and wakes up later only to discover the ship is adrift and there is no land in sight.
There is a lot to admire here. It’s not easy, reading about a teenager who is this damaged and self-destructive, but Bunn has given his main character, Sean Bulger, a sharp, self-deprecating wit that helps make even the most cringe-making scenes easier to stomach, and on occasion even funny. Also to his credit, Bunn has not glossed over any of the ugly details of what’s it’s like to be an alcoholic. He’s laid it all out for the reader in its rat-filled, vomit-soaked entirety.
Indeed, I would have happily given the book 4 stars if it were not for the ending. Right from the beginning I wondered how Bunn was going to be able to resolve the protagonist’s predicament. For me, the ending was so unexpected, so über dramatic, and quite rushed when compared to the rest of the book, that when I closed the last page I almost felt I’d been reading two different books.
That said, I would recommend this book to high school students and parents of high school students.

An alright survival story about a alcoholic Canadian teenager who gets trapped on a derelict ship. Said teenager cannot swim, apparently. The ship is towed out to sea with him on it and he's forced to survive on very limited food and water. A little too late in the novel he encounters some ship breakers who force him to work for them. An OK book - I was not too terribly impressed. Come on, what sort of alcoholic teenager uses the word "carp" instead of "crap" or doesn't just swear outright? Would be a good survival story for jr. high, early high school aged boys.

Very wordy, slows down the story. Excessive descriptions make it hard to keep interest.