So I am going to cheat here and I am going to use two (yes two!) TBR challenge themes for the one book. WILD! Has this ever been done before? I don’t know but maybe SuperWendy will know. Am I breaking the TBR rules??? I don’t know but also I am throwing caution to the wind. Because when it comes down to it, the book I read had sooooo much going on, has two distinct parts to it, that it deserves two themes.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, MAJOR CONTENT ALERT, MAJOR BLUE LANGUAGE ALERT! I am going to be discussing disturbing and upsetting details including abuse being part of the backstory for one of the characters. And I am giving away MANY plot details so just don’t read further if this is on your TBR.

The Book: Swept Away by Beth O’Leary

The Blurb: Lost at sea . . . with your one-night stand

Lexi is looking for no-strings-attached fun with a stranger. She deserves one night for herself, doesn’t she? Zeke is looking for love. But for one night with a woman like Lexi, he’ll break his rules. Sparks fly at the pub, one passionate kiss leads to another and they end up stumbling home to the marina together. The next morning, hungover and shaken by an amazing night together, Lexi is more than ready for Zeke to leave. There’s just one small problem . . . the houseboat they stayed on has been swept out to sea. As their supplies start to run dangerously low, and the waves pick up, Zeke and Lexi soon realise there’s much more on the line than their new relationship. How long can they really survive on a drifting houseboat in the North Sea? Will search and rescue find them? And who will they be if they both make it back to dry land?

This novel is written in two parts. There is the lost at sea section and then there is the back on land section. Each of these sections are quite distinct from each other.

The Sea – TBR Challenge Theme: Here there be monsters

As the blurb outlines, Lexi is reeling from her best-friend/faux sister Penny telling her to get her own place and stop being so obsessed with her daughter Mae. She’s miserable, drinks a bit too much at the pub and hooks up with Zeke who is also at the pub being all emotional having just bought back his father’s houseboat. The two manage to go at-it for a one-night stand on his houseboat, just to wake up the next morning to find the houseboat had not been tied to the wharf and had floated out to the big, angry, North Sea. They were adrift for 12 long days (and nights) in which they were initially at the mercy of no winds, and then, scarily fierce storm winds which pushed them upon abandoned oil rigs. The days lost at sea brought out all the monsters for Lexi and Zeke. The weather fear, the stuck-on-the-boat-with-someone-I don’t-know fear, will-there-be-enough-food-and-water fear, will-we-sink-and-drown fear, will-we-die fear. All the fears and monsters and ghouls that haunt us when we feel isolated and vulnerable are captured on this endless, boring, float to nothingness.

This situation forces a close proximity setting, necessitating Lexi and Zeke to understand each others needs as they need to ration their food, rely on each other in ways that they would never have done so on the land. We already know that Lexi is (rightfully) wary to be stuck at sea with an unknown man saying “I’d be the first to admit that I have a pretty low opinion of men, generally speaking. Experience has taught me that they’re useless at best and dangerous at worst”.

Zeke too has his hesitancies, and despite having indulged in a one-night stand, Zeke places a “No touching or kissing or anything sexual” rule for while they are adrift in the sea. This was adhered to and it allowed for all the talking and exploring of emotions. We discover that Zeke has just bought back the houseboat he inherited from his father who had died 5 years earlier. Zeke was still a teenager when he sold it, impulsive and lashing out, drinking and having a lot on one-night stands. Zeke has a realisation at 22 that he needs help, and he credits therapy for helping he sort through “the total mess that’s been my grieving process”. And this is where Zeke’s story becomes heartbreaking.

When Zeke was only 16 he entered in a “relationship” with a 28 year old woman that caused him a lot of grief. Zeke says “it’s part of what made me go to therapy. I didn’t think I could handle a relationship[…] I think […] the woman I really fell for when I was sixteen-I think she just confirmed for me that I wasn’t worthy of real love. But she did make me feel like I was good at sex”.

I found this just devastating and awful. This should have been called out for what it was – grooming and abuse. Instead, there was a whole lot of glossing over his emotional crisis. I was reading and in a rage. Here is a 23 year old man-boy describing how a 28 year old woman targeted him when he was 16. She was on a bored holiday, she targeted a 16 year old, had sex with him IN A FUCKING BATHROOM and the woman he is revealing this to, 31 year old Lexi’s response is “You totally have a thing for older women”.

How is this an acceptable response?! Why the fuck does Lexi gloss over Zeke’s pain? Why isn’t she outraged? But no! Wait! She can’t be outraged when she too has a similar age gap with him, one that does not pass the formula that everyone knows: half your age plus seven. But Lexi just rationalises her actions “He’s not actually a kid: he’s twenty-three. That’s sound, but not that young. A man can do a lot of harm by the age of twenty-three”. I got the ick. I really wished that the author had made Lexi just a couple of years younger.

There is another horrifying scene where Lexi says “I want to get drunk” and she accidently fucking knife injures Zeke in such a serious needs-stitches-this-isn’t-healing fucking way. Oh the tension! Oh my rage! But also acceptance of this scene. Because this is so typical of the English chick-lit that I have read, where the main character drinks too much, falls over, has a drunk fuck and there is chaos, that it feels like a plot device.

Uggh! Here there be even more monsters.

Thankfully, Zeke recovers and he has his own mental health in hand “I’ve been making progress, though. I made a conscious choice to take a different path—fall in love, have a healthy, happy family, all that stuff. I’m worth more than just one night” and his maturity (led by intentional therapy) and his rationalising left me only gritting my teeth as I read.

Their at sea time was very trying for me. It stretched my As-If-O-Metre. There were too many ridiculous scenes: the 8-day mark “Zeke’s hair is officially long enough for  a topknot” – DOES HAIR REALLY TRAUMA GROW IN SUCH A SHORT TIME????; the climbing to the top of the rickety windy oil rig in a Titanic-esque romantic moment; the vulnerable vomit scene brought on by bad food and seasickness revealing Lexi’s own bad track record with creepy partners “I don’t date men nice enough to hold my hair back when I’m throwing up”; and annoying American spelling in a British publication – floor levels are storeys not stories, DAMMIT!

By day 7 I could no longer suspend my disbelief yet they are lost at sea for TWELVE days (I nearly wept. I nearly stopped reading). It is stupid. As-if as-if as-if thoughts overwhelmed my reading, and I found I was just enraged. Even more so when it was revealed that back on the land there was a media scramble and major search for them from Day 1. Like, fuck! I get that there is authorial license with storytelling but I just couldn’t deal with how shit the British maritime/sea rescue was shown that they couldn’t find a houseboat drifting off the shore with zero wind. Especially with the first few days of “no wind” floating. And when they do turn up, it’s just in the nick of time. Another Uggh! But at least they get back to land.

The Land – TBR Challenge Theme: Friend Squad.

This is where the who book takes a turn, as I delight at the soap opera high drama that occurs. The book improved for me in this section but only because I had accepted the cray-cray, the abuse, the over-dramatic twists and turns. And what a turn!

A chorus of people turn up when Lexi and Zeke are rescued – their families, their friends, the rabid media, crowds who want to see the survivors. In the chaos, Lexi and Zeke, who days earlier professed their love for each other (LOL), are separated. Zeke is surrounded by his mum and siblings, and Lexi by her friends from the bar, Penny and Marissa and others. The absurdity becomes more absurd because Penny is ashen and admits to Lexi that Zeke is her baby-daddy. She had a one-night stand with him 5 years earlier when she bought the houseboat off him when he was still 18 years old (FFS – WTF IS GOING ON THAT AT 18 ZEKE HAS A ONE-NIGHT STAND WITH A 26 YEAR OLD. WTF 26 YEAR OLD???? He is a teenager! WTF!) I am exhausted! Poor Zeke needs more therapy! I need more therapy!

Lexi is in shock and decides to hate Zeke and never speak to him again. How dare he abandon her friend Penny, abandon a baby. But of course, Zeke didn’t even know he was a baby-daddy because he is stuck in his mother’s house unable to get in contact with Lexi. Oh the drama is even more absurd.

This poor man has been let down by everyone in his life. At least toward the end, his brother comes to this realisation and steps up. But the rest are trashfire. Even Lexi, for all her “I love him” protestations, still failed him beyond even her breakdown upon realising his connection to her friend/sister Penny. Lexi is led by Penny’s shock response to seeing Zeke/her baby’s dad, and this becomes part of her trauma response. It was totally illogical but so was their whole lost-at-sea experience. 

Marissa the bartender is so much smarter than anyone else. She sees the trash fire that is Penny – who is the worst friend ever. And Marissa is the one who gets Lexi to reconsider Zeke. Because of course, Lexi finally accepts Zeke into her life. Because, you know, lurve!

Despite all of my grumbles and complaints, ultimately, the second half of this book was full of heart, deep soul-searching and revelations that needed to be examined before the true love story was revealed.  It worked for me, I shed tears. There were other touches which I really liked, such as the Englishness of the dialogue, especially with the use of “daft” littered throughout the book which gave me that warm-fuzzies as it is a word used by so many of my English friends and family.

I first rated this book at 4 stars but then dropped it to 3 stars. I cannot overlook the abuse. Though I wish that there was just that little bit more nuance around the age differences and that Lexi had been portrayed with more pathos towards Zeke’s problems. The stupid drifting at sea for 12 days just to be saved in the nick of time annoyed me but it made for a good story. A good story doesn’t aways need to be logical, rational, neat with all its ts crossed and i-s dotted. A good story can leave a number of loose threads, it can enrage me yet still have me turning each page, full of tension and anger and invested in the outcomes, continuing to read every line. A good story can have faulted characters with faulted responses, and yet they ring true as they are more a reflection of real people and their complex and messy lives than a perfectly structured novel with perfect idealised characters living Stepford lives.