An interesting story and a beautiful cover but it was hard to stay interested in it. The 70s is a great time setting and Australia is always very cool.

This is a book based on jealousy , the choices we make and different paths we could have taken. I loved the fact it was set in Australia and it was near me. Im not a fan of archeaology so it kind of fell flat for me.

Great story! And set in my home country!! The author did a great job of sucking you into the story so you really felt apart of it

This book was set in Australia and that, for some reason, was really appealing to me. The entire premise of the story being set during an archaeological dig was also appealing because I haven't read a book involving that, and I found I loved the topic! It was just different.

“A section of the cliff face was lower and darker, its lip fat with ferns. She turned a slow circle, silently rebuking herself for being in such a hurry to get to this cave that she was forgetting the basics. Fresh – if ephemeral – water, the ocean, a lake, roos, muttonbirds and their bones, stone. It was all here, the Holocene supermarket.”

Annette, a 20-year-old student, and her friend Sue spend their weekends at archeological excavations. As Honours students, they have been asked to spend their summer holiday on a dig in New South Wales, the Beach Cave. Their supervisors, Professor Aled Wray and his wife Marilyn, are leading the excavations. As one spectacular discovery after another is made, cracks begin to appear in their marriage. Meanwhile, Annette and Brian, an engineering student who also signed up to take part in the dig, develop a special connection. But as tensions mount, Annette sees something she will never be able to forget. And when one of the dig's participants disappears, she makes a decision that will permanently change Brian’s life.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. I thought the setting in Australia in the ’70s was interesting and the vivid descriptions of the beaches made me forget about the current gloomy winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere. I never read a novel about archeology before and I enjoyed getting to know a bit more about the process. However, this also leads to my biggest complaint: many of the discoveries that were made were never mentioned again! I guess the book is centered on the mystery surrounding the disappearance, but I found it disappointing that answers were lacking regarding the archeological digs.

Although my curiosity wasn’t fully satisfied, I am really happy to have read this book. Still, I do think there are some extra points of improvement. For one, I thought that Annette seemed to switch between being almost childish and behaving more like an adult. I did most of the characters in this novel though as they felt very real and had some mysterious tendencies. A more crucial thing that stood out to me is that this book wasn’t actually very thrilling. Yes, I wanted to know what happened next, but I don’t think the author was entirely successful in creating a suspenseful mood. Combining this with the fact that the mystery of the disappearance was never fully explained, I really wish the ending of the story had been different.

To conclude, I would recommend this book if you are interested in archeology or looking for a beach read with substance, but I think it is less appropriate for those who are looking for a thriller.

At first I was glad to read and learn about all the colloquial Australian terms and places, as well as reading, and then looking up, all the archaeological jargon. I love to learn and I learned a lot at the beginning. As I read on in the book it all became rather distracting and the story itself was a bit difficult to follow. It seemed that some things and some points were not brought to a full conclusion and
what was supposed to be a twist or two, here and there, was too easy to figure out. Unfortunately, this is not a book that I would recommend to my friends. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance read copy.