Swept Away

For a story that nearly sailed away without me, I’m glad I was finally able to get onboard with it. It won’t go down as one of my favorite trips, but I have no regrets!

Thirty-one year old Lexi has put her own life on hold for the sake of her best friend/de facto “sister” Penny’s four-year-old daughter Mae, who she helps care for and all but sees as her own.  When her boss Marissa sees a cute young man at the pub, she encourages Lexi to put herself first for a change and have a little fun. 

Twenty-three-year-old Zeke has spent his life believing his recently deceased dad isn’t his biological dad and copes by sleeping around. With therapy, he’s trying to turn over a new leaf and find true love. Then he sees Lexi. Rules are meant to be broken, right?

After a night of drinking and a “no strings attached” one-night stand on a houseboat, Lexi and Zeke wake up and he offers to walk her home - only there’s a snafu. After a mistake in mooring the boat in the fog the night before, it’s now adrift on the ocean with no land in sight!

This begins a twelve day journey fraught with dwindling supplies, leaks, storms and no land or rescue in sight, not to mention some physical mishaps that put both of them in further danger.

At least they have an adorable injured seagull they’ve named Eugene to help keep their minds off the incessant threat.

I’ll break down what did and didn’t work for me because, to be honest with you, reading this wasn’t smooth sailing for me any more than it was for our main couple!

What worked:

• Character growth. After a rough start, where I very nearly DNF’d this due to the shallowness of both characters, it was nice to see them become more vulnerable and real as the story progressed. Their edges were smoothed nicely.

• A clever premise. I’ve never seen this scenario in a romance, so it was fun to see how it would play out trying to build a romance in such a perilous predicament. 

• Emotional depth. The exploration of grief (both characters lost a parent) and overcoming dysfunctional patterns helped make the MCs more sympathetic and relatable over time.

• A sweet ending. It's a bit of a buy-in, but what the heck? I’ll bite. 😊

Where I struggled:

• Insta-love. I could never buy into the deep connection and chemistry Zeke and Lexi had based on so little knowledge of each other. Zeke, particularly, had what felt like an unbalanced attraction to Lexi after sleeping with her one time. It felt a little ooky at first!

• Unhealthy attachment. Is it just me, or did anyone else find Lexi’s attachment to Mae a bit unbalanced too? I get that she helped raise Penny’s daughter, but she spoke of Mae as if she was her own daughter and as if her life revolved around the child. She was “Aunt Lexi”, but it felt like those maternal lines were blurred for her.

• Believability. For two people who didn’t know they’d be lost at sea, it felt like they conveniently always had everything they needed. I never felt an extreme sense of danger, because Zeke was whipping up meals for them the entire time!

Anyways, true to the book there were some rough spots on this trip I had to get past, but I’m pretty content with where it landed. If you like romance with some adventure and mild peril, this might be a fun one for you! 

★★★ ½ 

Thanks to Berkley Publishing, NetGalley and author Beth O’Leary for this digital ARC to honestly review. It’s out on April 1, 2025.