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Adrift
Will Dean
Publication Date: February 17th, 2026
Atria Books | Emily Bestler Books
352 Pages
Amazon | Goodreads | Bookshop.org
Genre: General Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers
This book is super intense. It’s about Peggy, her husband Drew (who has a seriously scary temper), and their teenage son, who’s been having a rough time with bullies. They decide to move onto a canal boat to get away from everything and hopefully fix their family vibes while Peggy works on her writing. But instead of being a relaxing trip, things get weird fast. Drew is totally jealous because Peggy’s book is doing well, and he starts acting really controlling and gaslighting her constantly. Being stuck on a tiny boat in the middle of nowhere makes everything feel way more crowded and creepy. It’s basically a big, stressful look at how a family can fall apart when one person is a total jerk, and Peggy has to figure out how to protect herself and her son before things go way too far.
Will Dean is one of my favourite authors. He is wonderful at locked room thrillers, but I think this one is the most suspenseful so far. This book is over 350 pages, and I read it in a couple of days. Mind you, we had record snowfall for one of those days, but still. I was holding my breath without even realizing it; it’s that good. The premise is a simple one, but scary. It boggles my mind how he was able to make the concept of getting away from it all and turn it into a slow-burning nightmare. What started as a writer looking for her creative spark on a canal boat quickly turns into marital psychological warfare (Think War of the Roses), and the sense of impending doom is visceral. I liked how Will Dean used the closed setting of a canal boat to bring a claustrophobic feel to the story. This is a haunting, super tense read that proves the most dangerous thing isn’t always from the outside, sometimes it’s the person sitting across from you at the table. All. The. Stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
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