The Cruise by Catherine Cooper

Good morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the Random Things tour for Catherine Cooper's latest, The Cruise!

A luxury cruise liner and a missing person. Believe it or not, it's not an unheard of scenario. Though not an ideal one for the Heracles company or their pride and joy, the Immanis. 

When a passenger's report that someone went overboard coincides with the disappearance of one of the ship's dancers, people aren't quite sure what to make of it. There's no evidence that anything actually happened. The witness had been drinking so no one can even be sure if she did actually see someone go overboard. But Lola has gone missing, that's a fact that no one can deny. And two weeks later, another employee is dead. 

Catherine Cooper's thrillers are pure popcorn entertainment! With fabulous locales—a grand but fallen French chateau, a chalet in the French Alps, and now a luxury cruise ship—Cooper's books are pretty perfect for armchair travelers who like their fictional vacations with more than a touch of mystery!

As someone who is particularly inclined to never going on a cruise, I do love them as settings for nefarious doings. So this was definitely up my alley (it was up my alley already because I enjoy Cooper's work)!

This book has such a fun progression in terms of how the story is laid out. We begin with a passenger who has won his trip on the cruise. We then jump to the staff on Immanis on New Year's Eve 2021 leading up to Lola's disappearance. 

Then we jump two weeks ahead to Immanis in port undergoing renovations (including security upgrades) while a skeleton crew remains on board. And of those crew, it soon becomes clear that everyone is hiding something!

But then we jump back to 2013 and a girl who wakes in the hospital after an accident. How her story ties into that of the occurrences on Immanis is part of the fantastic and twisted journey Cooper has in store for us as readers!

I absolutely loved The Cruise! I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a dark diversion in their reading lives. And if it's your introduction to Cooper, I definitely suggest picking up her previous books as well—you won't regret it!

The Cruise is out now in the UK and is due out in the States in February!