The Castaways

by Lucy Clarke ★★★★☆

Sisters Lori and Erin Holme have dealt with plenty of tragedy in their young lives. Both of their parents were dead before the girls turned twenty-one, and they have leaned heavily on each other ever since. When Lori's marriage imploded, it was Erin that she turned to first for help. Still reeling months later, Lori spontaneously books a trip for the two sisters. "Ten nights on a remote, barefoot island in Fiji, the dates spanning her twenty-eighth birthday." It would hopefully be the salve Lori needs to move forward after having her heart ripped open.

But now after the long flight from London they are in Fiji, and after a brief overnight in Nadi it's time for the small plane to take them to their final remote destination. Lori is at the airport, but Erin is nowhere to be found. After the sisters had a blow-out fight the night before, they separated, and Lori hasn't seen Erin since. She waits until the last moment, but with still no sign of her sister, Lori decides to board the plane, hoping Erin can catch a future flight once her anger burns off. She's joined on the small plane by six other passengers—an elderly couple, a man in his twenties, a businessman in his thirties, and another young woman with a baby—in addition to the flight attendant and pilot.

And that's when the proverbial shit hits the fan. The plane disappears. No transmissions, no sighting, no wreck. And after an intense search for weeks, eventually everyone gives in to the likely reality that they will never know what happened to flight FJ209.

Everyone except Erin, that is. Wracked with guilt and grief, and she devotes the next two years to trying to find information about the flight, going so far as to plaster her sister's old bedroom with newspaper clippings and lines of string connecting potential leads. She's bordering on giving up hope when she sees an unbelievable story in the London paper: Mike Brass, the captain of flight FJ209, has been found alive in Fiji.

From there, the novel bounces between the points of view of each sister: Erin, "Now" in the present day, as she heads back to Fiji to try to get answers out of the pilot, and Lori, "Then", from the day of the plane crash and the events that followed. It's a solid premise for a novel, and Clarke drops enough breadcrumbs to build an impending dread throughout. The story becomes more about the "how" of what happened than the "what", but it's still a propulsive read, with a few solid twists along the way.

This was a borderline 5-star read for me and one that I would recommend to most without reservation. I read much of it on a plane, which was perhaps not the wisest idea given the subject matter, but it's a great beach read that packs an extra layer of punch. Recommended.

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Quick Facts

• Title: The Castaways

• Author: Lucy Clarke

• Publisher: Atlantic Crime

• Release Date: January 6, 2026

• Format: Ebook

• ISBN-13: 978-0802167910

• Pages: 401