by Emy McGuire
Graydon House, 2025. 368 pages. Thriller.
At the start of summer, billionaire couple Francis and Lila Cameron set off on their private luxury sailboat to celebrate the high school graduation of their two beloved children. Three weeks later, the Camerons have not been heard from, the captain hasn’t responded to radio calls, and the sailboat is found floating off the coast of Florida. Empty. Where are the Camerons? What happened on their trip? And what secrets does the beautiful boat hold? Set over the course of their vacation and in the aftermath of the sailboat’s discovery, No One Aboard is a delicious domestic mystery that asks who is more dangerous to a family: a stormy ocean or each other?
I was not privileged to grow up in a household where sailing was commonplace. I remember sailing a few times at Scout camp to get a merit badge, but that took place in a reservoir in central Utah rather than the illustrious world of the Rich and Famous™. That said, I enjoyed this glimpse into this foreign world of excess, with its toxic family relationships and manipulative, deceitful secrets. There was a fair amount of the kind of family drama that makes so many reality TV so binge-worthy. The intensifying pace (which admittedly begins a tad slow) and not quite definable sense of unease and foreboding made for an eye-opening closed-room who-dun-it thriller; I honestly thought that it could have been just about anyone because they all were awful humans who, being candid, I don't think deserved to survive this story. They all should've been held accountable for their crimes, but maybe that makes this work all the more relatable to us plebeians. Be ready for multiple timelines and POVs, but not the jarring kind that fragments a story.