Reviews of After The Storm

In an earlier post I thanked book bloggers for their reviews of After The Storm.  To complete the picture here are the magazine and press reviews it has received to date and my warm thanks to these reviewers.

Richenda Miers Country Life August 26 2015

                                       

Chance unites two couples on a Caribbean cruise: four totally different characters, each battling with inner turmoil, in what should have been idyllic surroundings. As each of them unburdens their secrets and unravels their problems, a sinister foreboding builds into a terrifying climax, keeping you on tenterhooks until the end.

The Big Summer Book Review July 2015 Best magazine

After The Storm follows two couples, Rob and Anna from England, and Owen and Kim, from Florida, USA, as they set off on a boat towards a remote Caribbean island. The group spends 10 days with only each other for company. We found it was a bit of a slow-burner, but well worth the wait for the brilliantly dramatic ending. An enjoyable read – Best loves!

Alasdair Buchan Diplomat magazine May/June 2015

British couple, Rob and Anna are on holiday in Belize when they meet an American couple with a wooden boat who need cash so the four agree to share costs for a few weeks of blissful peace and quiet sailing in the Caribbean. Then they all lived happy ever after. 

You think? Don't be silly. This isn't Mills & Boon. It's the latest novel by Jane Lythell, the new queen on the block when it comes to unravelling seemingly idyllic scenarios, page by page, as the participants rush headlong in their ignorance to an unspecified nemesis.Tensions grow between each couple and between the couples. Nervy lovemaking, a hidden stash of drugs, a terrifying storm, (sex and drugs and pitch and roll?) are only the start as Ms Lythell skilfully ratchets up the pressure and apprehension. 

Once on dry land on the Honduran island of Roatan the foursome's troubles don't diminish. Foreboding gives way to mystery as the end, literally for some, arrives.

Declan Burke 15 March 2015 Irish Times

Set in the Caribbean, Jane Lythell’s After the Storm (Head of Zeus) opens with tourists Rob and Anna renting Owen and Kim’s creaky old boat, the El Tiempo Pasa, the foursome setting sail for what should be a leisurely cruise. Owen, however, is a man of secrets, and Rob and Anna very quickly find themselves in stormy waters. Lythell’s strength is in her descriptions of the story’s idyllic backdrop, the deserted islands and bustling ports. She’s also good at conjuring up a beguiling sense of the lazy, hazy days of a Caribbean cruise.

The story itself feels a little mechanical, plodding along, much like the El Tiempo Pasaitself, as it struggles to escape its mid-novel doldrums. The characters err on the rudimentary side, facilitating the plot rather than coming across as the fully fleshed people that would have done justice to the lushly realised setting.

Laura Lockington Brighton & Hove Independent February 19 2015

What better place than the cramped, claustrophobic confines of a yacht for the setting of a thriller? Lythell has done it again, with a meticulously-planned and plotted slow-burner of a book.

Rob and Anna meet Owen and Kim on the coast of Belize; they hire them and their old sailing boat to set off for an island in the Caribbean for some sun, sea and adventure. Oh dear. You just know they would have been better off in Tuscany. The geographical setting of this great book is ridden with illusion – and the front that the sleazy portside towns keep up for tourists is sinister in the extreme.

Charged with tension and doubts and questions: Why doesn’t Owen sleep? Why does Kim keep a knife zipped into her money belt? (Of course, I answered those questions early on, only to be proved wrong and wrong again.)

With four people on board a yacht in the sunny Caribbean, it should be a holiday of a lifetime, with rum cocktails and fresh fish for supper. But early on, the sense of dread and disaster haunt every page, till you are practically shrieking at them all to get off the boat, get to an airport, and fly home to safety.

But then, of course, we’d all be deprived of a great read.

My novels are published by Head of Zeus.

After The Storm

TheLie Of You