Bad Tourists
Escape to the Maldives with the hottest new friends-to-killers crime thriller beach read of 2024
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4.0 • 12 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Is it ever a good idea to go on holiday with friends?
Darcy, Camilla and Kate have each come on this trip of a lifetime for a reason - to celebrate a divorce, to find love, to try to put a traumatic past behind them.
Their dream getaway? The Sapphire Island Resort in the Maldives. With crystal-clear waters and sun-drenched white sand beaches, relaxation is guaranteed.
But all is not as it seems in paradise, and this is no ordinary friendship.
They've got nine days to go . . . and old wounds are already reopening.
Will they all make the return journey?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Caro Carver’s Bad Tourists is a stunning and thrilling crime debut from an author best known for her gothic novels. The story opens in Dover, England, on 10 September 2001, where a young woman narrowly escapes a violent massacre. Fast forward 22 years, and we find Darcy, a recently divorced mother of three, embarking on an extravagant, celebratory trip to the Maldives with her friends Camilla and Kate. They meet Jade, a woman in her twenties who’s on her honeymoon with her seemingly perfect yet abusive husband, Rob. Set against a luxurious, tropical backdrop, everyone is delightfully barefoot and sun-kissed, but things get dark and violent at night. Carver’s writing is sincere and intelligent, with thoughtful psychological depth, examining how anger and the need for control can shape our lives. It’s a thrilling page-turner and an ideal vacation read, even though it’s a vacation you wouldn't want to take.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carver (A Haunting in the Arctic, as C.J. Cooke) delivers an engrossing if uneven destination thriller about three friends whose vacation goes sideways when a past tragedy rears its head. Darcy Levitt has splurged on a nine-day holiday with her best friends, Pilates instructor Camilla and ghostwriter Kate, at the luxurious Sapphire Island Resort in the Maldives. Ostensibly there to celebrate Darcy's divorce from her tech mogul husband, Jacob, the 40-somethings also share a connection to a grisly murder spree that took place in Dover, England, 22 years earlier. When one of the resort's guests turns up dead, the friends fear that history may be repeating itself. Flashbacks reveal how each woman was involved in the Dover massacre, and as the trio's vacation turns into a sprint for survival, Carver cannily drops in clues as to their true natures, occasionally dipping into the viewpoints of Darcy's husband and a honeymooning fellow guest for additional context. It all works like magic until the book's final quarter, when Carver rushes to tie up too many loose ends. Still, readers will have fun predicting how the pieces of this puzzle fit together.
