The Living by Matt de la Peña (review)

It sounded like a great summer gig for a rising senior—pool boy and water server aboard a luxury liner shuttling rich vacationers between California and Mexico and Hawaii—but Shy Espinoza is finding the job isn’t as fun-filled as he’d thought. Yes, the tips are great and the coworkers, especially luscious Carmen, are as good-looking as he is, but on the first voyage out he is stuck listening to the drunken ramblings of a man who later throws himself overboard, and by the second voyage, he’s being tailed and interrogated by a black-suited man who seems to know a little too much about him—and that’s just for starters. A massive earthquake on the West Coast unleashes tsunamis that capsize the liner, leaving Shy stranded at sea in a lifeboat with a spoiled rich girl whose father is clearly key to the suicide mystery. They are rescued and brought to a hidden island where the full extent of a deadly pharmaceuticals cabal is revealed, and Shy and a couple of rescued crewmates (including, of course, luscious Carmen) fight for their lives. There’s an awful lot going on here, and the pile-up of tragedies and evil plots could strain the credulity of even hardcore thriller fans. Peña takes the time to establish some solid rapport among his characters before unleashing the mayhem, though, and the central disease and drug scam is so viciously immoral that readers will probably book passage on the upcoming sequel, to learn whether Shy and his two smokin’-hot love interests will bring the bad guys to their knees.