The Boat by Clara Salaman

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime...Johnny and his new bride Clem have arrived in Turkey for a year's honeymoon. Young, blissfully happy but poor, they are surviving on love, luck and a spirit of adventure. So when a boat appears out of a raging storm, crewed by a bohemian couple who represent everything Johnny and Clem want to be, they do not think twice about stepping on board. But all is not as it seems. And when they finally open their eyes to the truth, the boat is in the middle of the vast open sea...With echoes of The Beach, this is a hypnotic, emotionally charged novel about two sweet young lovers who lose their innocence in paradise.

The Synopsis for this novel really peaked my interest and had me reading with a kind of desperation to find out what would happen. 

Johnny and Clem are on their honeymoon in Turkey. They have little money between them so they have been surviving on whatever jobs they can get. One job leads them headfirst into a sticky situation and has Johnny and Clem jumping on the first boat that will take them out of there, which is owned by a bohemian couple and their daughter. They seem nice enough but hidden beneath the surface is a sickening truth which they discover in the middle of the ocean with no where else to go.

Although the premise of this novel really did have me intrigued and as I said earlier, I was desperate to find out what happened, it did not quite manage to hold my attention the whole time. Despite this I thought the novel was really well written and the emotions of Johnny and Clem really get across to the reader and it was interesting to see how they started off so sure of themselves and then were like two completely different people at the end. You see them begin to question everything and the author also takes us back to difficult times in their lives, which makes you wonder if this had a lot to do with how easily their characters change.

This did become quite dark and uncomfortable reading in places as you really do not expect it. It is because it starts off so light and care-free that the shift is so dramatic. I also did not expect the ending at all, and I am not quite sure what to make of it, but I quite liked how it threw me.  

I definitely think this is a novel that people will enjoy and I did understand the novel, but it just did not manage to hold my attention as much as I had hoped.

6.5/10

The Boat is available to order from Amazon UK and Waterstones