I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

It was supposed to be the best-ever girls’ trip: five days, four friends, one luxury yacht, no parents. But on the final night, as the yacht cruised the deep and dark waters between Florida and Grand Cayman, eighteen-year-old heiress Giselle vanished. She’s nowhere to be found the next morning even after a frantic search, until security footage surfaces . . . showing Maggie pushing her overboard.

But Maggie has no memory of what happened. All she knows is that she woke up with a throbbing headache, thousands of dollars in cash in her safe, a passport that isn’t hers, and Giselle’s diary. And while Maggie had her own reasons to want Giselle dead, so did everyone else on board: jealous Viv, calculating Emi, even some members of the staff.

What really went down on the top deck that night? Maggie will have to work her way backward to uncover the secrets that everyone—even Giselle—kept below deck or she’s dead in the water.

Short and Sweet Review

Maggie is about to go on a girls trip with her friends, Giselle, Emi, and Viv, on a luxury yacht. Trips are supposed to be fun but when the girls wake up and can’t find Giselle they start to panic, when they watch the security videos they see that Maggie pushed Giselle overboard. Maggie doesn’t remember anything that happened that night but she does know that everyone had a motive for not wanting Giselle around.

If you know me you know I have a problem with mysteries that take place on boats, mainly because all the suspects are on the boat so it’s a small pool of people to work with. Dead Below Deck is interesting because it takes place over five days, day 5 is when everyone realizes Giselle is missing and from there we work our way backwards all the way to departure day. As we work backwards we learn all about the characters and why they may have had a motive to get rid of Giselle. Our main character is Maggie, and she was new at school and lied about who she really is to fit in. Giselle is rich and she’s used to getting what she wants and her friends Emi and Viv have been around for a while so they’re weary of new comers. Maggie and Giselle are on two different spectrums, Giselle is well off and Maggie and her family are barely making it. When we see the day of everyone realizing Giselle missing Maggie finds her journal and through that we see that theres more to Giselle than we thought but she’s also very calculating. The girls in this book reminded me of Mean Girls and I found them to be more calculating and I was surprised they were even friends but like they say “who needs enemies with friends like these?” The concept of backwards chronological order was different but at some points I found it hard to remember everything that was going on. The ending was okay but I just didn’t like any of the characters enough to really care. All of the characters fell flat, there was no dimension to them.

Overall, this was an okay book, it wasn’t great and it wasn’t horrible either. It’s different than other mystery books because of the chronological order but I think it would have been better if there were flashbacks instead. This wasn’t my favorite book but I do think other people might enjoy it more than I did.