I love YA like Dead Below Deck. There are plenty of plot twists and it has a really creative angle. The reverse chronological narrative is very cool and much easier to follow than I expected. I wasn't crazy about the diary entries (a trope that's a hard sell for me, in general) and I think the setup would have been much cooler if the author pulled it all off from Maggie's perspective. Nevertheless, this was still a fun read.

4.8 stars! Very creative move to tell the story in reverse chronological order. The timeline and pacing are excellent. The setting is brilliant and enticing. I could figure out some of the twists and not all of them, which makes this YA text a really fun read. The characters aren't the most deeply developed. The ending is ... Read this book and see for yourself!

Potentially easy to predict for regular mystery / thriller readers but nonetheless, I was invested and had a good time with Dead Below Deck by Jan Gangsei. Any book that starts with action has my attention, and we're immediately presented with a 'overboard and presumed dead at sea' scenario in which the suspected killer is still on board. And telling the story.

I love a good setting of (extraordinarily) rich teens at a boarding school or in other exceptional settings - in this case, on a yacht trip for spring break. We get the the best of both worlds here, because we have the current timeline of events as told from the POV of Maggie, still on the yacht and presumed to be the killer trying to prove her innocence, while we have the flashback while at boarding school storyline via diary entries from Giselle, who went overboard. All the while, we're trying to piece together who would want Giselle dead (well, everyone, really) and how the little hints and puzzle pieces left in the diary fit in with the current events.

There were a great number of details and red herrings to remember, which is always a really fun part of mysteries, but occasionally ran up against a wall of being too repetitive on some of them which made the ending more obvious to guess.

I flew through this one, so overall I do recommend it if you enjoy the genre and want a fast, fun read.