This was a free bonus short story for this month's Amazon First Reads, so I figured "why not?" and picked it up. It was a quick read and honestly not that bad. Far from perfect, but it was a passable short story. My biggest issue with the story was that it felt like there was a lot of filler between the inciting incident and the big reveal at the end. Basically, Sophia ends up going on this trip by herself after the boyfriend gets called away at the last minute (at the airport, literally as they're supposed to board). He supposedly has a camera, fancies himself a good photographer, and has a list of photos that he wants to snap while he's there... and for some reason Sophia just accepts that and agrees to continue going on the trip she didn't really want to go on in the first place. Which feels a little weird; if my wife had booked us a trip that only she was excited about and then had to cancel at the last minute, I'd just cancel too... not go on the trip without her.

Once they get to the boat, the author spends a lot of time detailing the other characters on the cruise and Sophia's (uninteresting) adventures while she's there. It's basically just a recounting of the day trip excursions interspersed with her laments about why her boyfriend isn't calling her, what he could be up to, cyberstalking him to find out what's going on, etc. It honestly makes her kind of unlikeable throughout the middle part of the book, which makes the twist at the end feel like it's no big loss.


SPOILER ALERT


At the very end of the story, it's revealed that Sophia's boyfriend (who up until this point has claimed to be divorced with kids) is in fact... gasp... not divorced after all. The call at the airport was his still-wife, having discovered his indiscretion and proposed trip with Sophia, calling the airport and confronting her husband, telling him to come home to his family. So he did. And at the end of the book it's basically his wife calling Sophia and filling her in on what happened, telling Sophia to leave them alone, and then hanging up. And Sophia just goes home and goes on with her life which feels a little anticlimactic. There's a part at the end where Sophia reflects on lessons learned (and frames a photo she took from the trip), but honestly it all rang kind of hollow because the trip itself wasn't particularly interesting.

It wasn't a bad read, but it certainly didn't make me want to drop everything and pick up another of the author's books anytime soon.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 4:12pm • Submit your own review...