Adrift

3.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
A woman wakes up alone on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, with no knowledge of herself and only a note telling her it's all for the best. Unwilling to let it rest, she starts following up sparse clues, only to find both friendships she didn't expect and danger she's not prepared for.

Review
It takes a certain amount of either confidence or chutzpah to take one of the most tired of tropes – amnesia – and use that as the basis for your first novel. I can't say that Brideau breathed new life into the idea, but it's a tribute to good writing that she pulls it off as well as she does.

You won't find much that's new in the base story here – a woman wakes as an amnesiac, with instructions to forget her past and naturally does all she can to dig it up. It's a basic thriller plot, but set in the near future and with some romance mixed in.

What Brideau does well that's not new is to create interesting, engaging characters. There aren't many, but they are appealing and fun to follow. The romance feels a little easy and overdone – protagonist Ess meets only a few people in the first third of the book, but they all seem to fall for her quickly. It's hard to assess why – she says little, and we know less about her looks. As the book develops and her character comes out, it's a little more reasonable, but at the start it seems quite odd. The men are accomplished, hypercompetent types. Despite this shaky footing, Ess herself, in her very familiar predicament, is engaging. I can't say I was super absorbed, but I was always willing to come back to her story.

The plot gets a bit vague as more of Ess' prior identity emerges; you have take unfocus your eyes a bit to avoid the seams, but it's not hard. The broad wrapup is similarly thin, a point underlined by an epilogue that's too expository.

Overall, though, familiar, but well written and enjoyable, and gets bonus points for being serious about climate change without being a message story.