Beneath the Surface is an absolutely fun juicy family drama set on the high seas. Billionaire Richard Kingsley invites his children to a weekend on his yacht, the Splendid Seas.

The agenda: deciding who will be next in line to head the company after Richard retires.

The contenders: eldest son John, who has been his father’s loyal right hand and enforcer since forever; younger son Ted, a handsome and charismatic salesman who left the family business a few years ago; and only daughter Sibley, a wildcard most candid about being interested only in her father’s money. Also stirring the pot are Richard’s young and beautiful wife Serena, who schemed her way into Richard’s heart; John’s wife Rachel, a powerhouse lawyer and the Lady Macbeth brains behind much of his power; and Ted’s wife Paige, a former marketing executive turned stay-at-home mom / food bank volunteer who is itching to return to the workforce now that their daughters are about to leave for college.

It’s a set-up that’s ripe for major drama, and Kaira Rouda certainly delivers the goods. I knew who I wanted Richard to choose as his successor, but I also knew my choice was a long shot, and as the story progressed, the more and more I didn’t want particular characters to win the spot. Richard very much pits family members against each other; he’s a manipulative man, and as each sibling jockeys for top spot, you can practically see their father happily pulling one set of puppet strings after another.

Because Rouda does such a great job in drawing readers into these characters’ lives and hearts, I found myself genuinely switching between anxiety and frustration as first one sibling then another seems to get the upper hand at any given point. I wanted very much to make myself a bowl of popcorn and simply sit back to enjoy the drama unfolding, but it was no use: Rouda succeeded in making me feel invested in this fictional power play.

The setting also helps heighten the tension. Most of the action takes place on the yacht, and Rouda does a great job at describing how rough the water is, so even as the characters consume super luxurious meals, the violent waves and ever-present threat of a storm make the whole voyage feel more like torture than vacation. The family members do go ashore for a few scenes, but even then, there is no relief, as a storm has cut off all communication outside that area.

This is a locked room thriller at its finest, and Rouda is a master at ratcheting up the tension exactly where she needs to. There were chapters where I held my breath turning the pages, just waiting — or rather, anticipating, for the inevitable moment all those bubbling emotions give way to murder. In this, Rouda’s writing reminds me a bit of Agatha Christie’s. Stylistically, both authors are very different, but Rouda shares Christie’s gift in crafting these incredibly vivid characters who are often unlikeable in a variety of ways, putting them all together where they can’t escape each other, and then just letting the characters play.

Overall, this book is just a pure joy to read. Bring the popcorn, do a buddy read with your equally-drama-loving buddy, and just have a blast watching all the drama unfold.

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Thank you to Firefly Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ritual of Fire was a solid mystery, and a fitting read for the scorching hot days of summer. Series lead Cesare Aldo has been banished to the countryside, and his former protegee Carlo Strocchi is left behind to deal with the politics in Florence. Strocchi has been assigned to solve the case of a serial killer, someone who seems to be executing wealthy and powerful men in a way similar to how puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed in Florence forty years ago.

The twist? The victims used to be followers of Savonarola, and they seem to share a decades-old secret. Aldo’s own investigations lead him to Florence and the same case, and as much as Strocchi would prefer for them to stay out of each other’s way completely, he’s also under tremendous pressure to solve the case, and Aldo’s insights may prove invaluable.

I absolutely adored the previous instalment of this series, The Darkest Sin. Beyond the mystery itself, I was sucked into the personal drama between Aldo and Strocchi. Strocchi had always looked up to Aldo, but then learns something about his mentor that he has a strong moral objection to, and basically gives Aldo an ultimatum that forces his mentor to request a transfer to the countryside. It’s wonderfully juicy interpersonal drama, and I’ve always been a sucker for reading about disillusionment in a mentor-mentee relationship, so that last instalment made me fall in love with the characters.

This instalment’s appeal lay much more firmly within the mystery at its core. Who was killing these men and why? I’m proud to boast that I did figure out the murderer, means, and motive long before the actual big reveal. Still, the clues, suspects, and twists were all handled well. There was even a late-in-the-game red herring that made me seriously doubt my guess.

Drama-wise, it wasn’t quite as gripping for me as the last instalment, and I think it’s because both Aldo and Strocchi are way too professional to really let personal animosity get in the way of tracking down a murderer. Strocchi’s distaste for Aldo’s actions is further mitigated by the fact that Strocchi’s wife herself is totally fine with Aldo, and while Strocchi is initially angry that she lets Aldo near their baby, he’s ultimately too good and rational a man to let prejudices cloud his judgement for too long.

So: overall, this is a solid instalment in the Cesare Aldo series. The mystery was good, and as someone who barely knows anything about Italian history, it was also a fascinating deep dive into what was going on in Florence in 1538.

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Thank you to Publishers Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

There’s a fantastic scene in the Dungeons and Dragons movie where the druid Doric transforms into multiple animals as she races out of a castle and across a field after a spying mission. Much of the scene is shown through her perspective, so even better than seeing her switch into a mouse or a fly or, later on, a deer, we actually see the world through the eyes of a fly or a mouse or a deer. It’s a fantastic bit of cinematography, and an exhilarating five or so minutes.

Ed Yong’s book takes us on a similar journey. He shows us how a broad range of animals experience the world, and makes a very deliberate effort to focus on these animals as themselves and not how they relate to humans. He does use human experiences in comparison, to help us understand how each animal experiences sights or smells or touches, but the overall impression is that of being taken through experiences very much alien to us readers. Rather than anthropomorphizing the animals he talks about, Yong invites us to be animorphized into animals (is that the word?).

The result is an incredibly fascinating deep dive into animal life. What must it be like to see in multiple directions at the same time? How must the world seem to someone who can taste with their feet? How much incredibly richer are the scents of the world to a dog than to a human? There’s a particularly cool bit about a kind of insect that has sex near forest fires, and the reason is that the fires chase away this insect’s predators, and so makes the forest safe and food sources easier to access for them and their families.

And on a more sobering note — why are some human actions so harmful to animal life? I’ve heard the stats before of how city lights kill lots of birds every year, but this impact hits different when you read about why darkness is so important for birds when they migrate. In the case of the insect that has sex near forest fires, the smoke from backyard barbecues can mess with their perceptions by making them think there’s a forest nearby that would be a safe place for them to have sex and raise their little insect babies.

The book is chockfull of scientific facts, and as fascinating as it is (my kindle copy is filled with highlighted passages), it does take a bit of time to get through. I also doubt I remember enough to actually answer questions about individual animals I read about. (For example, I think the forest fire sex insects are a kind of beetle, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I got that wrong altogether, as that was from an early chapter and I would’ve read that maybe a month ago.) Still, this is just a good reason to buy a copy of the book for yourself, rather than borrowing it from a library. (I initially borrowed it from the library, but then realized I wanted to highlight so many things that buying my own copy made more sense.) It’s the kind of book I can imagine dipping into over and over again, and honestly, I’m even considering buying a paperback copy so it’s a bit easier to casually flip through whenever I get in the mood.

There are some disturbing bits about the experiments scientists had to do to learn some of these facts. Like, I think these were done on ants? or some other kind of insects? where the scientists removed one or more of their senses to get a better understanding of how these insects navigate the world. That was hard to read, and part of me does feel like the learnings really aren’t worth making the animals suffer like that. But at the same time, I do find the learnings so fascinating that I’m planning to own two copies of this book. And Yong does do a good job of highlighting how conflicted some of scientists themselves are about their actions — a lot of them go into the field of studying animals because they love animals and are fascinated by them. So while I wouldn’t go so far as to say I sympathize with these scientists, I also recognize my own complicity in their actions, and would be hypocritical to blame them.

Overall, I LOVE how this book focuses so much on the animals as themselves. There isn’t much about how this or that understanding of animals’ lives and behaviours are being used to help medicine and planning for humans. Rather, the animals are, and remain, at the center of Yong’s writing, and it is us as humans who take the back seat in this deep dive of their world.