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A Novel
Grand Central Publishing
June 2026
On Sale: June 2, 2026
320 pages
ISBN: 1538776073
EAN: 9781538776070
Kindle: B0FTV19G3S
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook
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LGBTQ | Humor
In this twisty, uproarious debut, a pop culture obsessive uses her reality TV expertise to investigate a suspicious disappearance aboard a yacht ... while falling for a hot deckhand and avoiding confronting her best friend's untimely passing—perfect for fans of The Wedding People and Traitors.
This is a story about a definitely dead girl, a possibly dead girl and a living dead girl. All aboard.
There are a lot of things that pop culture aficionado Melanie Hoffman is great at: rattling off storylines from The Real Housewives, reciting the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen filmography from memory, and quoting Gossip Girl like it’s The Godfather, to name a few. And then there are the things she’s not good at: maintaining a healthy work-life balance, sleeping (in general), and being a functioning adult who isn’t completely destroyed by the death of her best friend, Ari. Mel has accepted that nothing will ever fill the crater-sized hole that Ari’s absence has left behind, and the cork on her grief is stopped tight. But then her company requires Mel to take a mandatory vacation. Cue the explosion.
Desperate to avoid two weeks alone with her thoughts, Mel joins her friend Vish on a yacht trip in Greece chartered by his tech company. It’s the Below Deck fantasy of Mel's dreams, with built-in quasi-celebrities to fixate on in the form of the posh co-founders of Vish's company. Mel has done enough social media stalking to immediately typecast the fabulous yet fragile Freya, her arrogant boyfriend Seb, and the hardworking and humble Ollie. A luxurious yacht chockful of hot, rich Brits? Mel couldn’t dream up a better distraction from her sorrow.
But Mel's dream quickly plunges into nightmarish waters when a sinister conversation overheard in the dead of night convinces Mel that Freya is in danger. And when Freya turns up missing the next morning, Mel immediately clocks what happened with the skill of a rabid true crime fan: Freya was murdered, and Seb is the prime suspect.
But Freya’s disappearance doesn’t rock the boat in the way Mel is expecting. In fact, no one else onboard seems to think anything’s fishy. Mel’s concern for Freya grows into obsession, and she becomes dead set on saving Freya’s life like she couldn’t save Ari’s.
With her time left on the yacht quickly dwindling, Mel must uncover what happened to Freya before going under herself.
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