A remote island in the Southeast Pacific is a great place to hide from a sketchy past. The Resort is set on Koh Sang, a resort island in Thailand, where mainly younger travelers flock to party with abandon. Brooke is a travel influencer with a huge following on @BrookeaTrip who arrives at the Koh Sang Dive Resort, ostensibly to promote the island and the resort. While there she meets and befriends Cass, a dive instructor who is a member of The Permanents, a tight-knit group of multi-national expats who work on the island. Every member of the expats has something to bury in their past, some secrets worse than others, that no one else knows about. What the resort and Koh Sang authorities are eager to cover up is that a young woman recently fell, or was pushed, to her death from a cliff on the mountain walking trail. Brooke is suspicious of this unlikely incident, and when a second woman dies on the island she begins to quietly investigate since no one else will. But Brooke needs to be careful…because someone on the island will do anything to keep the truth hidden.

I did something I rarely do while reading this novel – I stayed up far past my usual bedtime to finish it. And it was completely worth it. The story unfolds in chapters alternating between Brooke and Cass as they paint a picture of The Permanents and slowly divulge their past and true reasons for being on Koh Sang. On the surface, it appears that everyone in the group is friendly and congenial, with Brooke and Cass quickly becoming very close friends. But it soon becomes apparent that none of the people in this circle truly knows or even trusts the others.

Without the necessity of flowery descriptions, the author provides the reader with a vivid mental image of Koh Sang. “As soon as we step outside, the sun bites my skin.” The setting and resort feel very real, and the passages describing dives indicate the author’s first-hand knowledge of diving. In some respects, The Resort reminded me of an Agatha Christie novel, with virtually all the characters becoming suspects as unpleasant aspects of their character or history are revealed. The icing on the cake is the chilling surprise at the end. Perhaps the only fault I could find was the title, which doesn’t do the book justice. A cracking good read – highly recommended.