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"Kept me glued to the page until I closed the cover! An impressive debut."
—J.D. Barker, NY Times bestselling author of A Caller's Game

Deep Water wasn’t what I expected it to be. The beginning was slow, the middle was interesting, and the ending didn’t really work for me. Although it was an okay read, I wish I’d gone with my gut and labeled
It as a DNF around the 15% mark. There’s just way too many books to read one that’s only sort of good.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

This is an unexpected delight. I could not put it down. Can’t wait to read more from this author. Kept me up all night

I was excited to get to read this book for the cover and looking for adventure and suspense, but this book was too much a slow burn for me! I didn't hate this book, but I didn't love it either! The beginning sucks you in, but when it flashes back to before and leads up to the present, it's just way too much description about sailing and not enough suspense to really keep you reading.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers of this book for this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

"The dark side of paradise is exposed when a terrified couple reveals their daunting experience on a remote island to their rescuers - only to realize they’re still in the grips of the island's secrets - in this intense and startling debut in the tradition of Into the Jungle and The Ruins.

When a Navy vessel comes across a yacht in distress in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, Captain Danial Tengku orders his ship to rush to its aid. On board the yacht is a British couple: a horribly injured man, Jake, and his traumatized wife, Virginie, who breathlessly confesses, "It’s all my fault. I killed them."

Trembling with fear, she reveals their shocking story to Danial. Months earlier, the couple had spent all their savings on a yacht, full of excitement for exploring the high seas and exotic lands together. They start at the busy harbors of Malaysia and, through word of mouth, Jake and Virginie learn about a tiny, isolated island full of unspoiled beaches. When they arrive, they discover they are not the only visitors and quickly become entangled with a motley crew of expat sailors. Soon, Jake and Virginie’s adventurous dream turns into a terrifying nightmare.

Now, it’s up to Danial to determine just how much truth there is in Virginie’s alarming tale. But when his crew make a shocking discovery, he realizes that if he doesn’t act soon, they could all fall under the dark spell of the island."

I am always drawn to stories about people who have boats and set off on adventure only to have all things bad descend on them.

Comparisons to The Ruins are greatly exaggerated.

I should have been all in on this one. I simply love stories where people on vacation do something that makes things turn dreadfully wrong.

This one, though, was slow.

We know immediately who our problem character is and we also know how horribly naïve our main character is. I swear I wanted to slap some sense into her more than once.

The terrible thing that happens is not at all shocking and it takes sooooooo long for it to happen.

We have the thread of a good story, but it never comes together as anything particularly exciting or suspenseful.

Regretfully, 2 stars.

• ARC via Publisher

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery Books for the copy of Deep Water. This was a really slow starter, and nothing much happened for the first 50% of this book. We learn so much about daily life on the island it gets tedious. When things finally started to pick up I got more interested, but by then I was a little burned out with the story. The story was all focused on Virginie and I think it lost its way when it turned into Tengku’s story too. The book description talks mainly of Tengku, so the focus of most of the book being Virginie just didn’t make sense to me and just throwing him in at the end was puzzling.

When a Malaysian naval ship hears a distress call coming from a small, normally deserted island, they stop to find a young woman, named Virginie and her badly injured husband aboard what they presume to be her yacht. But as she climbs aboard the military ship to head for the nearest port and medical attention, her story begins to take some bizarre turns. How did her husband end up injured and fighting for his life? And is his attacker dead, still on the island, or now on the boat with the unsuspecting crew?

This book follows a story-within-a-story format, and it does it really well, in my opinion. It starts out with the Malaysian ship picking up the signal, then segueing into the story of Virginie and Jake as they begin their adventure on the ocean and eventually on the unspoiled island paradise called Amarante. But as the description - and the beginning of the book - tell, we know that paradise eventually becomes a nightmare, so there's a lot of suspense throughout the book as we wait for thing to go sour. And things are do.

It's really slow-burn, but there's a great build up of tension and foreshadowing that we know something's off right away and we're left waiting and watching for the other shoe to drop. And then the author throws in some nice twists to keep things interesting, so by the end things were wrapped up nicely, but in a way that was surprising and made for a good story. I really enjoyed it.

Overall, this was a nice paradise gone wrong story, one of my favorite genres. This is a solid entry into that category and I highly recommend it.

This is one of those "travel to a remote area" psychological thrillers. I see mixed reviews on this book, but I am not sure why. I thought it was really well done.

The book starts with a captain of a large ship hearing a distress call. The crew picks up a woman and her gravely injured husband. from a ship that's adrift. The woman says "I killed them all!" She then starts telling the captain the whole story - from the time they set sail.

I love how this was done. By reading about her killing someone, you immediately know things are going to go bad. The story then revolves around Virginie and Jake, newlyweds who are sell everything they own to buy a sailboat and sail the world. They end up on a remote island in paradise. There are a few other boats there - and there end up being on 7 people on the whole island.

Knowing that something bad is coming keeps the tension high as you read this. In addition, the writing style just adds to the tension. I have to admire the writing - when the author is merely writing about paradise, you still feel the tension.

As the book progresses, the dynamics change, the tension rises even more , and your opinions about some of the people start to shift.

The only downside that I have to this book is that the middle bogged down just a little. It was a LOT of time describing the island and fiixing the boat. I absolutely believe that much time was needed on the boat repairs because you just felt how LONG they dragged out. However, it did start to feel a little slow.

I want to thank the author #Emmabarnford the publisher and #netgalley for the ARC which did not impact my review.

“Deep Water” is a well-written adventure tale that includes aspects often found in literary novels. For the most part, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others, especially those with an interest in sailing or traveling to remote, challenging parts of the world, or who are fans of books and movies like “All is Lost,” “Dead Calm,” “Lord of the Flies,” and “Swept Away.”

British newlyweds Virginie and Jake combine all their savings to purchase, sight unseen, a small, well-used sailing yacht now moored halfway across the world. Kicking over the traces, leaving their rented home and jobs in England behind, they fly to Malaysia to sail the Indian Ocean. Just as they finish provisioning their vessel, they learn of a beautiful but far-off and isolated desert island where hardly anyone goes--a seemingly perfect place to escape the stresses and strains of civilization.

They arrive to find three other boats, five other people, and a communal/sharing arrangement with some very specific rules—rules that are necessary but that will cause tension and conflict. As will some of the personal interactions and relationships that develop. As will the island itself. Tensions and conflicts that lead to terrible consequences. Will Virginie’s and Jake’s marriage survive? Will Virginie and Jake?

Author Emma Bamford writes well. Sentence upon sentence, paragraph by paragraph, chapter after chapter, at no time did I think I was in the hands of an amateur. Her descriptions of settings are evocative. Her dialogue is realistic and believable. Her characters, for the most part, are well developed. Indeed, as is often the case in literary novels, some of them are flawed but grow. In any event, I liked the protagonists and cared about what happened to them.

I did find plot and pacing to be a bit problematic. In fact, there was a point about midway through when wondered if I was going to finish. There seemed to be very little conflict and even less tension. The island didn’t appear dangerous, or even very interesting. The seven adventurers were all getting along well—partying on the beach, etc. Utopia, or Nirvana, having been reached, the novel seemed to have lost its energy.

But then things heated up, with characters confronting ever-intensifying dangers and conflicts, and making increasingly poor choices. I found myself re-engaged and wanting to know how it would all turn out.

All in all, a solid 4-star performance and a fine debut from this first-time author.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with an ARC. The foregoing is my independent opinion.

4.5 stars raised to 5! A couple is located by the Malaysian Navy stranded on a large catamaran in the middle of nowhere. She is visibly distraught and he is seriously injured. She tells their story to the ship’s Captain. Vee and her husband Jake have saved since their marriage and bought and refurbished a boat, Wayfarer, and are sailing through Malaysia. While there, they meet and elderly yachtsman and learn of a special island that is well worth seeing. They travel toward it and I will not tell readers anymore about the plot because of spoilers, but will say you learn endings before learning beginnings. This is, in my mind, a very difficult and tricky way to formulate a plot but it had me reading chapter after chapter wanting to know why the things that happened did! Thanks to Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC for an honest review.

I would like to thank both NetGalley and Ga!lery Books for the opportunity to read Deep Water in exchange for an honest review. The fact that this book has elements of both outstanding psychological suspense greatly appealed to me.

Virginie and Jake seem like a lovely young couple, but given the hints we rostered about Virginia's past, I'm not sure just how young they are. They embrace the idea of buying a boat to be their new home, and sailing to exotic locales. At the beginning of their journey they learn of a mysterious, isolated island that is reputed to be absolutely pristine. Ignoring the warnings they're given, they make their way to the island of Amarante.

Once there they meet a small but colorful cast of characters, and as one more boat arrives the dynamics begin to shift. There are several things that get brought up that I thought would lead to more than they did, but it seems they may have been red herrings.

While there are suspenseful points in the storyline, overa!l this book lacked the cohesion to maintain that feeling of urgency that I associate with a strong thriller. Between that and the disconnect I felt in the main character's behavior (based upon those prior experiences alluded to early on in the story), I feel as if this could be much stronger after another editorial pass. But then that's easy to say from this side of the page.

Thank you to NetGalley, Gallery Books, Gallery/Scout Press.

A naval ship picks up a yacht in distress. A man and woman are on it, and the man is non responsive with an injury. The woman confesses that she has killed people. She reveals a story of being on an island and what happens when tension occurs in a deserted paradise.

There are some great aspects to this story. I like how it goes back and forth between the past and the present. However, the plot is often slow and predictable. It reminded me a lot of another book (whose name I cannot recall) that has a similar plot - deserted island, murder).

Thank you for the opportunity to read Deep Water. I really struggled to get into this book. At 30 percent I decided to DNF it.

The synopsis for this book had me excited for a great thriller and the opening chapter pulls you straight in!!

However, at that point, it's page after page of nothingness!! You are continually led into what you think will be the beginning of the intrigue only to be let down by just more descriptions of Amarante and living on a boat and repairing a boat....I had no clue what the mystery even revolved around till the last 100 pages or so! I will say that the last quarter of the book was entertaining what led me to a 3 star review versus a 2 star. The storyline had potential but there was just too much unnecessary details and little clips that really had nothing to do with the finale!!

Thank you Netgalley and Gallery Books for an advance copy in return for an honest review.

A Navy ship comes across a fancy yacht in the middle of the ocean. The inhabitants are in trouble. When Captain Danial Tengku gets on the yacht they find a very injured man, Jake, and his wife, Virginie. Virginie is in distress and says "It's my fault. I killed them all." Virginie begins to tell her story about how they ended up in the middle of an ocean on a yacht that doesn't belong to them.

The premise of this story was a good one but it took a long time for the story to get going. I feel like a large portion of the story was spent with them finding this mysterious island and meeting/spending time with others who have also found this island. Lots of talk about boats and sailing which I don't know anything about and it made me lose interest. At one point the two main characters stumble across what seems to be an abandoned town which is surprising because it's an isolated island and I thought to myself "ohhh this is going to be good" but then that storyline really didn't go anywhere. I wanted more action than I got and I feel like the story didn't come together well in the end. I wanted to love this and I just didn't, unfortunately.

I was excited about the premise of this book, and the beginning had me hooked, but then I slowly began to lose interest. I think his will have more appeal to those familiar with or interested in sailing. But ultimately this just wasn’t for me. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is good...this is really good! It may start off kind of slow for most readers but it builds into that slow burn that gets your heart pumping. To think that there are really people out there that find the most remote places to explore...after reading this...not me!

Deep Water by Emma Bamford is an engrossing read with fully developed plot and characters that pull you in until the final page. Well worth the read!

I loved the tropical feel of Deep Water. This book pulled me in from the first page and held my interest. I knew something happened from the start, but the story builds slowly and makes it hard to put the book down at the end until the last page is turned. Thanks to author Emma Bamford, Gallery/Scout Press, and NetGalley for providing a copy of this ebook for an honest review.