About the Book
The sun is shining, the sea is blue, the children have disappeared.
When Liv and Nora decide to take their husbands and children on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The adults are lulled by the ship’s comfort and ease. The four children—ages six to eleven—love the nonstop buffet and their newfound independence. But when they all go ashore for an adventure in Central America, a series of minor misfortunes and miscalculations leads the families farther from the safety of the ship. One minute the children are there, and the next they’re gone.
The disintegration of the world the families knew—told from the perspectives of both the adults and the children—is both riveting and revealing. The parents, accustomed to security and control, turn on each other and blame themselves, while the seemingly helpless children discover resources they never knew they possessed.
Do Not Become Alarmed is a story about the protective force of innocence and the limits of parental power, and an insightful look at privileged illusions of safety. Celebrated for her spare and moving fiction, Maile Meloy has written a gripping novel about how quickly what we count on can fall away, and the way a crisis shifts our perceptions of what matters most.
My Review
Wow this book was creepy. Not creepy in a horror type of way, but creepy as in … I have no idea what’s going to happen at any moment type of way. I saw this described as a “relentless thriller” and I think that’s the perfect way to describe this, after the first few chapters. I wish the beginning had been a little bit condensed so we could get into the action right away, because that is really when the story held my interest and kept me captivated. The different POVs was incredibly intriguing and hats off to Meloy for solid writing with so many different characters having a voice. If you enjoy thrillers, I think you’ll need to pick this one up.
4.5 stars
