The Resort Book Review
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks
What you can expect
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This book contains content that may require a content warning. The book involves themes of suspense, violence, and potential psychological trauma, with dark elements surrounding the mysterious events at the resort. Readers may also encounter themes of manipulation, danger, and abuse. If these topics are sensitive, it's important to approach the book with caution.
Why you can trust my review of The Resort
While preferences in books are widely subjective, I tried to come up with a methodology for rating thrillers that focuses on the elements of the genre. My rating and review are based on how well The Resort incorporates all of those elements. While I can't promise complete objectivity, you can trust that my rating and review are not completely biased.
Summary of The Resort
Cass thought that she found her forever paradise in Koh Sang, an island in Thailand known for its parties and escapism. She makes a living as a dive instructor at the Koh Sang Resort and has found her place amongst The Permanents, a group of fellow expats who have made the island their home. However, paradise is interrupted when someone starts sending Cass cryptic messages that they know who she is and what she’s done. Shortly after these cryptic messages show up, one of her dive students’ bodies is discovered without any obvious clues as to how she died. The most concerning part is that this isn’t the first death to mysteriously happen on the island. As Cass’s paradise starts to turn into a nightmare, she knows it's time to run before her past meets her present and her real identity is revealed for all the world to judge again.
Judging the book by its cover
The cover image captured my attention only because I love sunsets, palm trees, and the promise of an ocean nearby. When I read the synopsis, I thought it was going to be like every thriller that takes place on an island: predictable for lack of options (they are on an island, after all). What propelled me forward was that it’s the author’s debut novel and I wanted to see if we would get a fresh perspective on an island thriller.
My take on The Resort
I’m going to admit this up front - I didn’t particularly care for a majority of this book. But. The end. Was. Mind blowing! Action packed ending with twist after twist! Now that this admission is out of the way, let’s unpack the book (with minimal spoilers, of course).
Cass is a local dive instructor for the Koh Sang Resort. Koh Sang, a Thai island, is infamous for its parties where people prefer anonymity. Nearly everyone in Koh Sang is running away from something in their past and this makes the island the perfect place to hide and start over. The group of people that have decided to make the island their permanent home is aptly called The Permanents. They, like Cass, have something to hide and we’re only told surface level details about them. This made it very difficult to connect with any of the characters. This was especially true with Cass because everything that was revealed about her up front was so surface level that I didn’t much care what happened to her.
Brooke is a travel influencer with a large Instagram following. However, like most people on Koh Sang, her purpose for being on the island goes beyond the reason she gives when asked. There’s less mystery around Brooke than there is around Cass, but Brooke comes across as vapid and it was also difficult to care about her.
The book goes back and forth between Cass’s point of view and Brooke’s point of view. What we learn from Cass’s point of view is that she’s running from something. What we learn from Brooke’s point of view is that she’s running towards something. When one of Cass’s diving students is found dead, Cass and Brooke team up to figure out why someone would want to kill this particular person. What they find is that this person has ties to the last person that turned up dead on Koh Sang. Then, another person turns up dead. In the end, it turns out that I did guess correctly.
While I was able to correctly guess who killed each of the people who died on the island, there were a few twists I didn’t see coming and a bombshell of an ending that absolutely threw me for a loop. One of the things that I appreciate the most about thrillers is when there’s a twist so good, I’m left with my jaw dropped for several minutes while I process what I just finished reading. This was one of those moments and is honestly the reason why I ended up liking this book so much.
While I do think that this book has room for improvement, I was really impressed with the twists and the ending. I do wish that Cass was more likable, the suspense was more present, and that the action was dispersed more throughout the book. It was a fast paced book that crept up on me in terms of likability. I’m glad that I gave this debut novel a shot.
Who should read this book?
I would recommend The Resort to anyone, but with a warning that there are depictions of physical abuse, self-harm, and sexual assault. If those depictions don’t trigger you or you’re able to safely handle the trigger, this book is definitely worth giving a shot.