Lucy Clarke: My review of three of her destination thrillers

Lucy Clarke has a first class degree in English Literature. I've read that she is a passionate traveller and diarist. Before taking up writing full time, Clarke worked as a presenter of social enterprise events and led creative writing workshops. She is married to James Cox, a professional windsurfer, and together they spend their winters travelling (ostensibly for research for her novels😉) and their summers at their home on the south coast of England.

Until I found Lucy Clarke's books I wasn't aware that destination thrillers were a thing. Apparently they are! Clarke has written eight of these types of thrillers, two of which have been made into Paramount+ shows, The blue (also known as The escape) and The castaways.

Here's my review of One of the girls, The castaways, and You let me in. I do like the destination angle as it adds a layer of interest to the story. Who doesn't love a good thriller set on a Greek island? The books I've read so far have been suspenseful and nicely paced. I'd say they're a guilty pleasure read, but there's still plenty of complexity to the stories to hold my interest.

One of the girls | Published June 2022 | Read September 2024

One of the girls sets up the perfect premise for a destination thriller. Six very different women travel to a gorgeous Greek island for a hen's trip for bride-to-be, Lexi. The villa where the women is staying has glorious ocean views, and the trip promises to be full of laughter and midnight cocktails. In true thriller style, there are dangerous undercurrents beneath the sunny skies as each of the women is hiding a secret. Someone is determined to make sure that Lexi’s marriage never happens – and that one of them doesn’t leave the island alive.

Lexi's hens include Brooke, her extroverted maid-of-honour, Brooke's girlfriend Fen, whose aunt owns the house, Robin, a childhood friend of Brooke and Ana, Lexi's more recent close friend, and Eleanor, Lexi's fiancé's sister. The secrets that are revealed along the way - some in public and some privately - completely shatter the idyllic holiday.

The Greek setting is fab, and I felt like I was there with the women, celebrating Lexi's upcoming wedding. There are six unique women to get to know, but Clarke does a nice job of giving each of them personality and depth so I didn't get lost in their individual stories. The reader knows upfront that someone dies, but not who or why, and that alone is enough to plough through the book. I liked learning about each of the women (lots going on with each of them!) and the tensions amongst them that emerged as the story wore on.

One of the girls might be better described as a psychological drama or character study, not so much a thriller. The main action is less about a crime than an exploration of a complex and interesting set of characters. It's hard to say much more without spoiling, but I liked the comeuppance of one of the characters at the end. I also liked the way the women's stories are so intricately woven together, and not in an unbelievable way, either.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The castaways | Published March 2021 | Read August 2024

I can see why The castaways has been made into a television show. It reads like one, as if written to pre-empt the dramatisation of the story. The premise is this: two English sisters, Lori and Erin, are on their way to Fiji for a holiday. They arrive in Fiji and stay overnight, intending to take a smaller plane the following day to an outer island. Erin misses the second flight after a bitter quarrel between the sisters that evening.

On board the flight the next day is a small group of passengers, the pilot and a flight attendant. The passengers include an elderly couple, a young mother with a baby, two men, and Lori. The plane ends up crashing on a tiny, uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean.

There are chapters dedicated to the survivors' story and to the present day, two years later, where Erin is still searching for her missing sister. Then the pilot turns up out of the blue in Fiji, and Erin returns there to search for answers. She's a journalist, and she convinces her boss to allow her to go to Fiji to cover the story.

Clarke has created yet another beautiful destination for a novel and the premise, like in One of the girls, is the perfect set up for a thriller. I liked the chapters that documented the unfolding drama after the crash, focussing on the survivors' stories, even though there were pretty intense and grim.

The book lost me at the end, though. The resurfacing of the pilot and what happened in the intervening time between the crash and the present are both implausible. The direction Clarke chooses to take to resolve the story is puzzling as well. I didn't dislike the book, I just felt a bit letdown that there was no surprising twist. The ending is unsatisfying and kind of weird.

Rating: ⭐⭐

You let me in | Published August 2018 | Read August 2024

You let me in has Elle Fielding as the main protagonist. She's a writer who is under a lot pressure to produce a follow-up to her successful debut novel. The destination of this destination thriller is Elle's magnificent clifftop house in her home town in Cornwall. Elle had taken a break from the house for a change of scenery in France to muster up some inspiration. She rents out her house and leaves her sister, Fiona, in charge.

As Elle settles back into her home, she senses something is not right. She's still dealing with writer's block, but is now becoming paranoid that someone is out to get her.

There's a good amount of the creepy factor in You let me in and the clifftop house provides a nice backdrop for the ensuing drama. All the creeping about the house was enough to create suspense. That said, the novel's pacing is slower than the other two books I've read by Clarke although I still had no trouble turning the pages.

I liked that Elle doesn't feel one-dimensional, it's just that she does a bunch of silly stuff (posting her whereabouts on social media when she thinks she's being followed, for example) that only seem to serve as plot points to advance the story.

I guessed who was behind all the creepy stuff and that's probably because the story lacks depth in its exploration of the possible suspects. Sure, there are red herrings and misdirection, but once those characters are discounted as suspects, their stories go nowhere. The reason for what happened to Elle is a terrific idea, it's just that that idea is not well executed.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐