THE SWELL

The author of Shiver (2021) moves from the mountains to the beach as a passionate surfer finds herself caught in a deadly adventure.

As this psychological thriller opens, sports therapist Kenna Ward flies into Sydney from her home in England, determined to rescue her best friend, Mikki, from her new fiance, Jack: Kenna hasn’t met Jack, but from what she’s gathered long-distance from Mikki, she's convinced that he's overly controlling and possibly abusive. Her concern is only to be expected—after all, Mikki and Kenna’s friendship dates back to their early schooldays when they were both surf-mad and shared adventures together, and Mikki's engagement to Jack was awfully sudden. But Kenna’s plans to investigate Jack take an unexpected turn when he and Mikki whisk her off to their secret hideaway, a remote beach in a semiabandoned national park, where they hang out with a motley crew of buddies known as the Tribe. Victor, Ryan, Clemente, and Sky all hail from various spots across the globe, and each one totes emotional baggage, whether it’s ongoing PTSD from a surfing wipeout or struggles with opiate addiction after a damaging accident. Together, as a team (“Fear is fuel….Panic is lethal!” is their motto), they spend their days surfing and egging each other on with trust exercises and supercompetitive tasks, testing their physical and mental boundaries in the ocean and on the nearby cliff and rocks. But not all is well in this surfers’ paradise, a no-holds-barred tropical pleasure spot despite the mosquitoes, ants, jellyfish, bats, and snakes. Kenna’s got her own challenge to overcome—she lost someone close to her two years earlier and hasn’t quite recovered. And then there’s the sinister undercurrent of a plot around missing backpackers. Who, you wonder, will manage to survive?

An exhilarating, adrenaline-filled tale of surfing and rock scrambling.