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audreyintheheadphones's review against another edition
2.0
A locked-boat mystery! Inconceivable!
Four stars for the first 150 pages, wherein our heroine, who is terrified of sailboats, accepts a freelance assignment on a great big dirty yacht. Fun fact: my sister and I are both terrified of sailing, due to an early childhood incident where we were dragged out on the San Francisco Bay on a family friend's very small yacht during choppy choppy seas. So I felt Cat's pain.
And the author does a fantastically detailed job having all the characters not just explain sailing and yacht-parts, but actually having Cat experience the different parts of sailing: the getting underway, the picking up wind, when to use a motor, and of course, choppy choppy seas, with the part of the sea being played by Lake Michigan. It's so detailed that if, for example, you happened to need to bone up quickly on boating for writing fanfic in a boat-heavy fandom, this book would be invaluable.
But, at about the 150-page mark, the sailing trip is becalmed, as alas, is the plot. From thereon out it was pure drudge, culminating in a method of pre-meditated murder so bizarre and farfetched that it makes exactly no sense at all, matched only in its unbelievableness by the identity of the killer.
The family friend who introduced my family to the joys of sailing, btw, was lost at sea with his boat in that same San Francisco Bay about 10 years after our trip, so I maintain my sister and I were onto something with all the screaming and crying.
Four stars for the first 150 pages, wherein our heroine, who is terrified of sailboats, accepts a freelance assignment on a great big dirty yacht. Fun fact: my sister and I are both terrified of sailing, due to an early childhood incident where we were dragged out on the San Francisco Bay on a family friend's very small yacht during choppy choppy seas. So I felt Cat's pain.
And the author does a fantastically detailed job having all the characters not just explain sailing and yacht-parts, but actually having Cat experience the different parts of sailing: the getting underway, the picking up wind, when to use a motor, and of course, choppy choppy seas, with the part of the sea being played by Lake Michigan. It's so detailed that if, for example, you happened to need to bone up quickly on boating for writing fanfic in a boat-heavy fandom, this book would be invaluable.
But, at about the 150-page mark, the sailing trip is becalmed, as alas, is the plot. From thereon out it was pure drudge, culminating in a method of pre-meditated murder so bizarre and farfetched that it makes exactly no sense at all, matched only in its unbelievableness by the identity of the killer.
The family friend who introduced my family to the joys of sailing, btw, was lost at sea with his boat in that same San Francisco Bay about 10 years after our trip, so I maintain my sister and I were onto something with all the screaming and crying.
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