No One Aboard by Emy McGuire
Trade paperback, $18.99, 368 pages
From the publisher:
The White Lotus meets Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me in this debut domestic mystery about a luxury sailboat found floating adrift in the ocean and the secrets of the missing family who set sail aboard it weeks before.
"No One Aboard is a riveting, astonishing debut, and Emy McGuire is an important new voice in fiction. I will read anything she writes!"
—Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times bestselling author
At the start of summer, billionaire couple Francis and Lila Cameron set off on their private luxury sailboat to celebrate the high school graduation of their two beloved children.
Three weeks later, the Camerons have not been heard from, the captain hasn’t responded to radio calls, and the sailboat is found floating off the coast of Florida.
Empty.
Where are the Camerons? What happened on their trip? And what secrets does the beautiful boat hold?
Set over the course of their vacation and in the aftermath of the sailboat’s discovery, No One Aboard asks who is more dangerous to a family: a stormy ocean or each other?
My thoughts:
I concur that No One Aboard has a White Lotus vibe to it. Much like The White Lotus, it was difficult to find a completely likeable character her to root for. Francis was downright cruel to his son Rylan, who doesn't show his father's aptitude or desire to be a macho seafaring dude. Rylan is quieter, more artistic, and closer to his fading movie star mother Lila. At times you wanted to shake Rylan out of his complacency, to be less meek, to speak up for himself.
Rylan's twin Tia was more like her father- tough, rash, quick to push the limits. She was sent away to a boarding school for her last year of high school because of something that happened at home, something the reader doesn't discover until well into the story. She can't wait to leave her family permanently, and she is trying to convince Rylan to do so as well.
There are many twists and turns in the story, and it is hard to know who is hiding what from whom, but it is fun trying to figure it out. Most of the crew members on the boat have been around the family for years, and they hold shifting allegiances to the various Cameron family members.
The scenes that lead up to how the boat came to be floating off the coast are harrowing, and very cinematic. (Perhaps a miniseries in the making?) The reader does have to suspend disbelief to accept the ending, and if you can do that, you will enjoy the ride.
Thanks to Harlequin for puttingme on their Fall 2025 Blog Tours.
