“On the Surface” by Rachel McGuire is a book that completely captivated me. Set against the stunning backdrop of the Bahamas, this psychological thriller dives deep into the world of a YouTubing couple living their dream life at sea—until a shocking disappearance turns everything upside down. McGuire’s writing is sharp and engaging, pulling you into the mystery with every twist and turn. The exploration of the characters’ public personas versus their private realities is both timely and thought-provoking, making this novel the perfect beach read. I was thoroughly gripped by the story’s suspense and the richly painted settings. If you’re a fan of thrillers with substance and style, “On the Surface” is a book you won’t want to miss. #OntheSurface #NetGalley

Much like my love for airplane thrillers, I am now a yacht thriller girlie!
This was riveting, entertaining and actually fairly thrilling.
I enjoyed my time in this story!

BOOK REVIEW


On The Surface
By Rachel McGuire

Plot: Sawyer Stone III and Dani Fox, a young couple who spend their time circumnavigating the globe aboard their 42-foot sailboat and documenting it for their fledgling YouTube channel Sailing with the Foxes in Bahamas. On the surface, everything looks perfect. But one night, Dani vanishes after a boat party, and Sawyer has no memory of her disappearance.

The search for Dani is initially fueled by concerns that she drowned, but Dani's prescheduled video posts, recorded before she went missing, soon reveal a darker side to her relationship with Sawyer.

Review: Right away the plot of this book had me excited. YouTube videos, missing girlfriend, suspicious boyfriend…it has the makings of a real page turner. My honest review Is a 3.5/5 (rounded up to 4) for a couple reasons. The book moved quickly and kept pace, which I do love in a book. It had reveals spaced evenly enough that you weren’t waiting around going "hurry up already!"
This is a personal opinion, but I didn’t feel anything but disgusting for both Sawyer and Dani as the book progressed. I wasn’t really rooting for either of them to be alive or not go to jail. That is the sign of a great writer, who wrote the characters and made us hate them (props to you Rachel!) but put me off, just a bit. The ending was good but felt rushed and didn’t come to a conclusion in the way I believe the readers deserved. It’s a cliffhanger of sorts.

If you are in the need for a good beach thriller, this is a solid book. It’s a read that I won’t put high on my list but I would still recommend it to my friends looking for something resembling a law-enforcement TV show!

On The Surface is out July 9th, 2024! Thank you to Rachel McGuire, Crooked Lane Books, and NetGalley for an ARC copy of On The Surface in exchange for my honest review!

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On the Surface is a perfect summer thriller with it's Bahamian location, the toxic relationship at its center, ant its sharp and witty commentary on social media influencer culture.

Everything seems perfect for Dani Fox and Sawyer Stone, if you're watching their Sailing with the Foxes YouTube channel. They're currently anchored in Exuma, needing to provision, but Sawyer's crypto investment tanked and left them without the money to do so. After a raucous party one night, Dani goes missing, and the community of cruisers is quick to put together an online search party for her. But when pre-scheduled YouTube videos continue to upload, they get a different view of Dani and Sawyer's relationship that isn't the picture perfect couple they seemed to be previously. Police Inspector Veronique Knowles must comb through witness accounts and online forums to figure out what exactly happened to Dani Fox.

This multi-POV story will have you thinking you know what happened, just to flip the story on its head! I really enjoyed the approach that writing duo Rachel McGuire took in incorporating social media influencers as well as true crime Internet fanatics, and their incisive commentary on both types of Internet users. The story delivers twists right up until the final page, and I devoured up every last bit of it!

Fans of Wendy Heard's You Can Trust Me and Kellye Garrett's Missing White Woman will love this debut thriller.

Wow what a fantastic thriller! I'm so glad I received this ARC.
Dani and Sawyer seem like the perfect cruiser couple - sailing the world while capturing their lifestyle for all to see on social media. After a wild party on another cruiser's boat, Dani goes missing, and Sawyer has no recollection of much of the evening. What happened to Dani? What do her pre-scheduled YouTube videos really mean?
It's can be difficult to create villains that a reader cares about, but McGuire 100% does! Dani and Sawyer are terrible people, but I could not stop reading about them. This book has so many twists and turns while also incorporating the insanity of social media and unsolved crimes. I loved it and can't wait to recommend it. The ultimate weekend beach/ cottage read! And the cover is amazing.
Thank you SO MUCH to Netgalley and Crooked Lane for an ARC in exchange for review.

On The Surface by Rachel McGuire casts itself as a modern mystery. Dani and Sawyer are YouTube cruising influencers. They circumnavigate the seas in their sailboat and document their time online. After a party, Dani goes missing and Sawyer, as partner of the missing, becomes suspect number one. He has no memory of her disappearance and she seems to have scheduled timely uploads which capture the attention of amateur sleuths around the world. On The Surface started out as a standard thriller without anything unique to capture attention. However, as more twists and turns are taken, the book gets more and more captivating. Sometimes, the writing feels a little too spoon-fed, but other than that it is written well and is a good story.

Thank to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

Wow. So many twists and turns in this one. I enjoyed being introduced to the life of "cruisers" (people who live on their boats and just hang out for most of the time). Both Dani and Sawyer were compelling characters, but also the most unreliable narrators, which kept me wondering what was going to happen next.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
I loved the cover and the description of this book.
It was a slow started but hooked me in. Social media influencers will stop at almost no lengths to get the content they think they need.
Great thriller with an awesome setting.

It’s like @rachelmcguireauthor could see into my soul while writing this book. It covers all the basic parts of my life: spending time in the islands, especially the Dominican. Trying to beat the algorithm. And binge watching Below Deck in all of its iterations. 😂😂😂 Add in a missing person and a murder mystery, and you’ve got me hooked! This book is ALL the buzz right now over at @thrillerbookloversthepulse, so you’re definitely going to want to mark your calendars for Pub day on July 9th! Shoutout to @crookedlanebooks for my copy.

This book was well written with an interesting plot. However, I chose to give this book 3 stars as, not including the prologue, this book had a slow start and took me a bit to get into. I also felt like the ending was abrupt, and left me with some unanswered questions about the story.

Pub: July 9, 2024

First things first - THE COVER. This thriller lover has been missing pink in her life 💖

A cover may make you pick up a book, but schooner or later, it’s what’s inside that counts and it’s my besties over @thrillerbookloversthepulse who told me I’d enjoy the story. There’s no doubt a-boat it - they were right!

On the Surface’s influencer/yachty life + Gone Girl vibe is a total fit for me. This combo makes for some delightfully unlikable and unreliable characters. It’s not un-yachtable for me to love unlikable characters and McGuire has created some that are interesting and fun to read. The steady pace of the plot propels the story and there’s a good balance of humour and tension.

There’s also some escapism, at least for this corporate girlie, in the idea of leaving the 9-5 behind and really just seas-ing the day. Yes, thrillers aren’t typically aspirational and yes, there are some parts of the story I would rather not live through, but I’d be walked down the plank if I lied and said I wasn’t dreaming about a life in the Bahamas.

Thank you to Netgallet and the publisher for the eARC! After reading it, I can understand why this novel seemed so amazing—it had an eerie resemblance to one of my favorite thrillers. I read various reviews after finishing this retelling of a now-famous story. I certainly noticed the parallels and was a little put out by this book's lack of creativity. Overall, an engaging read, just too similar to another book for my taste.

How far would you go to make money and become famous? Social media influencer, boat life and unpredictable lifestyle make this thriller unlike any other. I enjoyed this twisty novel even tho I wanted to slap the characters silly! It kept me guessing until the end. Makes you question everyone in the book.

I want to start by saying that I fell in love with this book COVER FIRST! It’s just so dreamy! The story followed through and this was easily 5 ⭐️’s!

5/5⭐️
Release date: July 9, 2024

Sawyer and Dani resonated with me so much because they live on a boat in the Bahamas! I grew up in Key West and there were tons of house boats! The couple has a YouTube vlog where they document their adventures. Everything sounds like paradise until Dani goes missing and Sawyer claims he can’t remember anything. Suspicious right?

Things really got good when a prerecorded video Dani made is discovered. It pulls everything about their relationship into question.

This book was one of my favorite tropes with a missing person. It was fast-paced and had a ton of twists. I didn’t see the end coming at all.

Over at The Pulse we are loving this book! There’s so many great thrillers coming up so check out @thrillerbookloversthepulse for thriller book recommendations!

Thank you to The Pulse, Netgalley, @crookedlanebooks for my gifted copy.

Rachel McGuire is the pen name Rachel Graham and Lee-Ann McGuire! I can’t wait to read more books from you two!

Thank you to @thrillerbookloversthepulse for the #gifted copy.

First, this cover screams summer! I stayed up way past my bed time to read this one. It was well worth it and is the perfect summer thriller to add to your list. Multiple POVs, influencer trying to make it big as one of the main character which was right up my alley and a cruise gone bad. What more could you ask for?

On the Surface was a great read. It kept me guessing the whole time. The story line was great and the main characters were so easy to despise. I thought this was a great book going into spring time with warmer weather. It would be great beach read.

Great Summer Thriller!! I loved this book. It had me guessing as to who did what to whom right until the end. There were lots of great twists!

Compelling, Propulsive..
A YouTuber cruising life couple seemingly living their ‘best life’, a cruising community, an idyllic island setting and a disappearance goes viral in this compelling and propulsive suspense where nothing is quite as it seems. The reader will be unable to look away as threads combine and reveals collide leading to a most satisfying denouement. Making excellent use of the contemporary social media world in which we now all live this was a one sit read for this reader - thoroughly entertaining and wholly engaging.

4.5 stars * the book I want to compare this book to would spoil it but it’s SO GOOD. Social media is a big theme and it’s cringey but mostly because it’s exactly how we imagine influencers to be. I loved the atmosphere of this book on a boat in the Bahamas. Even though I anticipated certain events, it was still such an exciting read to me and the two main characters aren’t likeable - but that’s the point. I was kicking my feet when Dani’s internal dialogue shifted and I won’t get into it to avoid spoilers but this was well done. I knocked off half a star because I wanted MORE. I wasn’t ready for this book to end and I wanted a few more chapters to see where everything ends up but all in all I really enjoyed this book and it’ll be such a fun summer read when it comes out.

Thank you so much Crooked Lane via NetGalley for this ARC!

3.5 stars rounded up

I can’t even talk about this book without mentioning the amazing cover! It really drew me in and made me want to read it!

Dani and Sawyer are a young couple living their lives as cruisers on their boat. Sawyer has made some bad investment decisions so Dani is trying to use her YouTube channel to finance this lifestyle that requires more money than they have. One night, while spending some time in the Bahamas, they attend a boat party. The next morning, Sawyer wakes up alone on his boat and Dani is nowhere to be found. Sawyer is hungover and does not remember what happened the night before. Soon after, prerecorded videos begin to appear on Dani’s YouTube channel, making Sawyer look like he has a dark side and that his relationship with Dani may not be what it seems. Her disappearance, along with the videos, go viral and Sawyer becomes the prime suspect. So what happened to Dani and does Sawyer know more than he is letting on?

This was a quick fun read and kept me very invested in finding out what happened to Dani! There were a few good twists throughout the book and the story is full of deception and lies, which always makes for a great thriller! The characters were not very likable and because of that, I was suspicious of all of them! The ending was not expected and did leave me with a few unanswered questions and definitely wanting more closure. This book is the perfect summer read and would be a great choice to take with you to the beach or on vacation! This is debut thriller and I look forward go seeing what else Rachel McGuire has in store for us in the future!