Ahoy there mateys! Death on the high seas!  Amnesia!  Super Yacht!  That would be enough to get me to pick up the story.  But then add in that the story is told in reverse chronological order using multiple perspectives.  Seems like it could confuse but instead it was a quick read.  I think young teens would really enjoy it.  Adult me had fun even though the story was extremely over the top.  Basically a mega-heiress named Giselle is pushed overboard.  Her friend Maggie gets the blame.  But as the story moves backwards, the intricacies and secrets of the four teens are revealed.  Maggie initially had more of my sympathy but turns out that all of the teens are not the greatest of people.  The book reminded me a lot of Sweet Valley High novels of my youth with more murder.  Lots of bullying, backstabbing, and focus on popularity.  Mean girls.  The solution to the murder was ridiculous and silly.  Younger me would have enjoyed the drama a lot.  If it sounds interesting, give it a shot.  Arrrrr!

Dead Below Deck by Jan Gangsei tells the story of what started as a fun spring break 5 day long yacht travel for 4 friends (Giselle, Maggie, Emi, and Viv) , ends in disaster. The trip ends with the disappearance of Giselle, who was last seen on video being pushed by Maggie and Maggie all she knows is that she woke up with a huge headache and no recollection of most of the night prior.

I loved the reverse timeline, that we started at end 5 with Giselle's disappearance and we went backwards on the events leading up to it and then after we reach day 1, where they are boarding the boat we go back to day 5 to get a clear picture of what happened. Between the timeline and Giselle's diary entries the story was very well shaped and intriguing for me. The going back and forth made it seemed like a dual POV book, between the timeline being told by Maggie POV and then Giselle's journal entry, being her own POV of past events.

Overall, I truly enjoyed this book and was such an easy read for me. It was my first time reading a reverse timeline and I loved it, it made me feel like a detective piecing the crime. However, I do feel like we were left missing some answers from some subplots and this could have been made aware during the final reveal.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for this ARC in exchange of an honest review.

Thank you to the publisher for the earc!

To no one’s surprise, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a YA crime, with a kinda unreliable narrator, and with the story chronologically backward. It was everything I love.

I love stories where we’re going back in time, it adds so much mystery to the plot. I kept thinking about what could have happened, but as usual I was always wrong. I need more books like this, this narrative fits a crime/mystery book so well! I loved the plot twists (yes, multiply!) and while I guessed one pretty early, the majority of the last chapter surprised me.

I have to say, I did not like the characters at all. But I think that was the point? It was very well written, I loved the style.

The only thing I wasn’t a huge fan of was the ending itself. It was too open for my taste, I would have loved one more chapter. I do understand the choice behind it, but it does not mean that I agree with it.

Overall, highly recommend it if you love YA crime books!

I loved how it changed from a peaceful journey into one full of danger, definitely kept me hooked. I enjoyed the way the book unfolded, it felt fresh!

The story’s structure adds to the intrigue. It unfolds in reverse, starting with Day 5 and moving back to Day 1, capturing the girls' final night and then rewinding to how it all began. Jan Gangsei alternates between perspectives, showing us Maggie’s version of events, police interviews with the two remaining friends, Emi and Vivian, and even glimpses of Giselle's private diary entries. This layered narrative keeps the reader guessing as each piece of the puzzle slowly comes together.

The format works well, but the character voices and portrayals fall a bit short. While Maggie’s narration and the police transcripts add tension, Giselle’s diary entries lack the emotional depth needed to fully flesh out her character. They feel flat and could have offered a more compelling glimpse into her life.

The ending, unfortunately, doesn’t quite deliver. The buildup of suspense and intrigue is strong, but the resolution feels abrupt and a bit contrived, leaving Giselle and Maggie’s stories on an unsatisfying note.

3.5/5, rounding off to 4

Short and Sweet Review

Maggie is about to go on a girls trip with her friends, Giselle, Emi, and Viv, on a luxury yacht. Trips are supposed to be fun but when the girls wake up and can’t find Giselle they start to panic, when they watch the security videos they see that Maggie pushed Giselle overboard. Maggie doesn’t remember anything that happened that night but she does know that everyone had a motive for not wanting Giselle around.

If you know me you know I have a problem with mysteries that take place on boats, mainly because all the suspects are on the boat so it’s a small pool of people to work with. Dead Below Deck is interesting because it takes place over five days, day 5 is when everyone realizes Giselle is missing and from there we work our way backwards all the way to departure day. As we work backwards we learn all about the characters and why they may have had a motive to get rid of Giselle. Our main character is Maggie, and she was new at school and lied about who she really is to fit in. Giselle is rich and she’s used to getting what she wants and her friends Emi and Viv have been around for a while so they’re weary of new comers. Maggie and Giselle are on two different spectrums, Giselle is well off and Maggie and her family are barely making it. When we see the day of everyone realizing Giselle missing Maggie finds her journal and through that we see that theres more to Giselle than we thought but she’s also very calculating. The girls in this book reminded me of Mean Girls and I found them to be more calculating and I was surprised they were even friends but like they say “who needs enemies with friends like these?” The concept of backwards chronological order was different but at some points I found it hard to remember everything that was going on. The ending was okay but I just didn’t like any of the characters enough to really care. All of the characters fell flat, there was no dimension to them.

Overall, this was an okay book, it wasn’t great and it wasn’t horrible either. It’s different than other mystery books because of the chronological order but I think it would have been better if there were flashbacks instead. This wasn’t my favorite book but I do think other people might enjoy it more than I did.

What begins as a carefree yacht cruise quickly becomes something much more sinister for Giselle Haverford and her friends from Andover Preparatory school. Giselle is looking forward to having one final voyage on her beloved family yacht, but secrets abound among her and her classmates. Everyone seems to have a reason to lie, and when Giselle is pushed overboard one night, each girl is a potential suspect. From fake passports and stolen identities to questionable friendships and hidden secrets, there is no clear answer as to who is truly responsible for Giselle’s disappearance or how high the stakes might be.

This twisting narrative is told from the perspectives of several characters and police interviews, and the chronology of the storytelling is not linear. Each chapter reveals a new piece of information for readers, and because the narrators are unreliable, it is difficult to determine exactly what has happened. As the voices change, so too do the fonts and appearance of each chapter, so it is clear who is speaking in each instance. And readers must pay close attention to every interaction in order to better understand the motives and backgrounds of the individual characters.

It is rare for a novel to progress in as unpredictable a manner as this one does, and readers who are looking for something out of the ordinary will appreciate the unique approach of this story. Flawed characters add to the intrigue, even as money and means appear to envelop everyone in the narrative. While opulence and privilege are ever present, the characters themselves have deeper motives to their behavior and interactions. And as everyone has secrets they are keeping, the true outcome of the novel is difficult even for the savviest of readers to foresee. Complex and intriguing, this book will appeal to readers who appreciate unpredictable storytelling with unreliable narrators.

Dead Below Deck is a wildly entertaining thriller that dives into the secrets of a group of high school girls. Told backwards, it's a suspenseful journey to figure out what happened to Giselle, and what Maggie had to do with it.

This was such a fun book! The timeline was great, it was told in reverse chronological order and that isn’t something I do often so I had a lot of fun with it. It was a little hard to follow, but not so much so that I didn’t enjoy it, it just required a little more concentration which was alright. I am a huge fan of YA thrillers, probably even more so than adult thrillers at this point. I don’t know why, but I usually love them when I read them and that was the case with this book. I think that this book was fantastic in that it was told from different points of view, and there were bonus excerpts from the victims journal and transcripts from the police interviews. The mixed media help break things up and truly made for an engaging and entertaining read. The writing was wonderful and written in a way that sucked me right into the story. I felt like I was in the yacht with these young girls (even though I didn’t really want to be!). I love how the story wrapped up, it was so much fun and I really did not see everything coming! I love when that happens because it is such a fun feeling to be surprised and that is exactly what happened.

This was a great YA murder mystery thriller. It was unique in that it told the story in reverse chronological order, but it made for a different, entertaining read.

This book about four girls who go on a yacht cruise to celebrate graduation and one ends up dead was super fun to read. Told in multiple perspectives, it’s hard to know who is the real killer. Everyone is hiding something, and the main suspect doesn’t remember a thing. But as details are revealed you think you know what’s going on, but you don’t. I didn’t guess that ending at all.

I definitely enjoyed this book, reading it in just under a day. Easy and fun to read, I definitely recommend for murder mystery fans.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollin’s Children’s Books for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dead Below Deck is a great addition to the young adult murder mystery genre. Told in reverse chronological order, Gangsei hooks the reader from the very beginning and keeps the twists and turns coming as the events unfold. To be honest, I had a hard time with the reverse order of the novel, but I understood why the author used this style. I thought I had everything pieced together at the end, but Gangsei delivered a well thought out ending. Readers who like Holly Jackson and Karen McManus will enjoy this new addition to the murder mystery genre.

This was my first time reading something that was written in reverse chronological order and it was really cool (though a little confusing at the beginning). The format lets the readers pick up on clues as everything slowly comes together. The flashbacks in the form of Giselle’s diary entries were also a nice touch. This is obviously more for a high school audience, so there’s the occasional drama between typical rich teens on a spring break cruise here. The incorporation of the interviews transcripts and text messages also built into the suspense. The switches between Maggie and Giselle’s POVs were interesting because as the story went on, I found myself trying to determine whose narration was more reliable.

I was also not expecting those reveals by the end. I still wanted more from this because it felt like there were other subplots that remained unresolved and could have contributed even more to the shock-factor behind the huge twist. I also wanted more closure from the other characters because the ending felt very abrupt. Overall, a pretty fun read and a quick YA mystery/thriller debut by this author! (3.5/5)

Aside from an issue I have with the very end of the book, I really enjoyed this twisty mystery. The plot is tightly crafted to keep you guessing about true identities, grudges, and actions. I like the conceit of showing the investigation into Giselle's disappearance in reverse because I feel like that gave me a better chance to catch some clues as they arose since you already (sort of) knew what the outcome would be. It's obviously meant more for high school with all the drinking and some swearing, but I wish it was appropriate for my middle schoolers. They would eat up the intrigue! Spoiler - I don't believe that Giselle would let Maggie leave at the end. She has been very careful about tying up all her loose ends and leaving Maggie alive is the biggest loose end ever.

We open after a murder has taken place. Maggie stares at her hands, desperately trying to remember the night before, questioning if she had what it takes to push someone to their death.

I was instantly drawn into Dead Below Deck. Jan Gangsei presents the story anachronistically, telling Maggie’s story backwards and Giselle’s story forwards (by way of journal entries), while also peppering in some current timeline tidbits like news stories and police interviews.

It was a great way to show us the whole story.

Telling Maggie’s story backward worked well, I was constantly highlighting and wondering what would come up next that would help to explain what felt like crytpic sentences.

Giselle’s story, however, didn’t work as well. It was presented as a journal in which Giselle wrote letters to her dead mom. But the voice of it doesn’t feel like a journal entry as much as it does narration. I think it could have worked to get the story out without the guise of that format.

Emi and Viv, the two other main players in the story and Giselle’s best friends also work really well as suspects as we get to know Maggie better and realize she most likely did not kill Giselle.

SPOILER WARNING!

My biggest gripe was the ending. Giselle planned the whole thing and framed Maggie because she thought Maggie was seeing her secret ex-boyfriend Wyatt. Which seemed unecessarily petty to me.

We also learn, from Maggie realizing it and Giselle confirming it in their ending conversation, that Giselle’s little brother is actually her son. This felt like it was added for shock value and I think we really needed to see her interact with him more for it to have any real value to the narrative.

So, while the ending wasn’t great, the rest of the book definitely kept me on my toes and switching sides.

This was a great beach read. It’s the story of a group of “friends” who go on a yacht and one of them ends up overboard while the other is suspected of murder.
I really enjoyed the pacing and timeline of the story. We found out about each character in an order that added to the suspense.
I would have loved to see a little more of the relationship between Giselle and Wyatt since it played such a role in the story.
Vivian’s and Emi’s stories also felt a little unfinished. I wanted to know how they ended up—however, leaving the story the way it was and having Maggie walk off with the plans to destroy everything was definitely a satisfying ending.

Dead Below Deck was a twisty mystery told in a unique way.
The book opens with a yacht and a missing girl. The main story is told in reverse chronological order. The end of each chapter also has letters that read chronologically, but begin long before the yacht leaves. There are also police interviews and news transcripts that begin after the girl goes missing and delve into the investigation.
It was fun gathering all of the pieces to try to solve the mystery, and this kept me turning pages. Is anything as it seems?

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins for an early copy for review.

I love YA like Dead Below Deck. There are plenty of plot twists and it has a really creative angle. The reverse chronological narrative is very cool and much easier to follow than I expected. I wasn't crazy about the diary entries (a trope that's a hard sell for me, in general) and I think the setup would have been much cooler if the author pulled it all off from Maggie's perspective. Nevertheless, this was still a fun read.

4.8 stars! Very creative move to tell the story in reverse chronological order. The timeline and pacing are excellent. The setting is brilliant and enticing. I could figure out some of the twists and not all of them, which makes this YA text a really fun read. The characters aren't the most deeply developed. The ending is ... Read this book and see for yourself!

Potentially easy to predict for regular mystery / thriller readers but nonetheless, I was invested and had a good time with Dead Below Deck by Jan Gangsei. Any book that starts with action has my attention, and we're immediately presented with a 'overboard and presumed dead at sea' scenario in which the suspected killer is still on board. And telling the story.

I love a good setting of (extraordinarily) rich teens at a boarding school or in other exceptional settings - in this case, on a yacht trip for spring break. We get the the best of both worlds here, because we have the current timeline of events as told from the POV of Maggie, still on the yacht and presumed to be the killer trying to prove her innocence, while we have the flashback while at boarding school storyline via diary entries from Giselle, who went overboard. All the while, we're trying to piece together who would want Giselle dead (well, everyone, really) and how the little hints and puzzle pieces left in the diary fit in with the current events.

There were a great number of details and red herrings to remember, which is always a really fun part of mysteries, but occasionally ran up against a wall of being too repetitive on some of them which made the ending more obvious to guess.

I flew through this one, so overall I do recommend it if you enjoy the genre and want a fast, fun read.