Reviews

Adrift by Paul Griffin

cpinon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Adrift is about 5 teenagers that go deep out into sea. Four of them went out on a boat chasing the fifth who was surfing and got stranded. When they get to her, the boat stops working, and they get stuck way out from land. The characters feel real to me because all of them are normal teenagers, who were living normal lives until they got stranded. I found it difficult to care for one of the main characters, Stef. She got them stranded in the first place by going surfing without telling anybody and getting stuck out in the middle of the sea. Then when she got rescued and people were understandably mad at her, she was trying to calm everybody down and she made it seem like it wasn't even a big deal. Overall, I think it was a good book and people who like a mix of action and character development would like reading this. 

mayapapaya7's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

It's like I was in the story, the characters were complex and the ending and parting of ways made me sad. The last sentence was... upsetting. Don't read the end listening to Fine Line!

shanlyz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Five of us went out on the water that night. None of us came back whole, and not all of us came back.

I found out later the wind that night was forty miles an hour with gusts up to fifty. That's strong enough to knock you over. It's also a windsurfer's dream.

Stef was way out there where the surfing was fastest. The waves were just as big as the breakers closer to shore, but their peaks weren't sharp. We drove up and down black mountains of water to chase her. 

We followed her over the wave. We'd been tracking her by the Windsurfer's light blue sail but now it was gone. We rode over the next wave and the next. She'd vanished, like we'd been chasing a ghost who'd suddenly grown tired of us.

"Go back," John said. "She must've fallen."

JoJo turned the boat back. The land was a thin black bar. We were farther out than I'd thought. The wind tore at our skin. My cheeks and ears burned. The engine screeched as the boat fought the waves. John edged JoJo away from the tiller. He slowed the boat until the engine noise smoothed out.

"There," Dri said.

"Where?" Jojo said.

Dri pointed to a shadow against a backdrop of moonlit water, but by now I had found Stef too, by her screaming. Her sail was down. She was trying to lift it, but the wind kept knocking it over. Another silhouette was in the water, but this one was circling the windsurf board. Then it stopped circling and charged Stef.

Jojo hugged me so hard my ribs ached. "It's a dolphin," he said I tapped my phone's flashlight app. It wasn't the spotlight we needed before, but it threw enough light to catch the reflection of the dolphin's eye. On TV they're gray and tame. This one was glossy black with silver- and honey-colored spots. It was bigger than I would have thought, and much more powerful looking.

"It's protecting her from the sharks," Jojo said. He took a picture of Stef. Click, flash. The dolphin backed away but not for long. 

She groaned. Her eyes rolled back and her head slipped beneath the surface.

Dri dove and broke the surface without a splash. An eerie sucking noise followed Dri into the water as the surface healed itself where she had ripped a hole into it. I dove after her, remembering to kick off my sandals but not to leave my phone. I lost it as I hit the water. The flashlight app was still on and the light was dropping away too fast, spinning into the darkness below me. The dolphin chased the fading blinks.

I lifted Stef's head from the water. Her eyes were open, but she was unconscious. "Her head's bleeding." I said. "I think maybe the surfboard fin clipped it."

Dri and I found the cut by feel. It was behind Stef's hairline, at the base of her skull. At one end of the cut the skin flapped.

"Stef, wake up," Dri said. "C'mon now, don't do this."

I twisted the knot until the blood flow stopped. If we didn't get her to a hospital within a couple of hours she would lose the arm, I was pretty sure.

Jojo tried the ignition. Nothing. Then John tried and the engine screeched. John unscrewed the gas cap and looked in. "Yup," he said. "We're empty."

John disconnected a tube from the engine block. He sucked gas from the line and spit it overboard.

"Fixed?" Jojo clapped John's back.

John definitely ignored him this time. He reattached the tube.

We helped him reassemble the engine. Half an hour later he turned the ignition switch. The engine roared. We cheered, until John turned off the engine.

"What are you doing?" Dri said.

"We don't have enough fuel to make it back," John said.

"How do you know?"

"We have a gallon of gas. This kind of engine burns ten gallons an hour, I figure. That's six minutes of drive time. At top speed we'll get four miles before the engine conks out. That's without a head wind. We're at least fifteen miles offshore by now.

Stef’s arm was a prop from a zombie movie. The skin was greens purple and gray where it had ripped. I palmed Stef’s forehead. Her skin was hot, and she shivered nonstop. 

She died with her eyes and mouth open. That beautiful young woman who was joking around less than a day and a half earlier was just nowhere.

The sky was too clear and the moon too bright. The body didn’t look anything like Stef now. It didn't look human anymore either. It had swelled even more quickly than I thought it would. It’s-her face had split at a laugh line. We'd wrapped her in the windsurfing sail to keep the flies off her, but they kept coming anyway, more and more of them.

We had no way to advertise we were in trouble, no radio to call the Coast Guard, no flares. Our SOS flashes were lost either in the sun or moon glint apparently. Nobody had any idea where we were. How could they?

Even if they figured out we'd borrowed the boat by now, why would we have stayed on the water?

Then again, how could we not be on the water? If we'd come back on land we would have gone home. Why would five kids who didn't know one another simultaneously decide to run away for a week and a half, without leaving a single word with loved ones? The only logical conclusion was that we'd gotten into trouble and drowned.

Would we? Was that how it would end? Would we capsize in a storm? Drowning would have been preferable to dying of thirst.

What would that look like? How would it feel? Would it be so painful that there would be a need for mercy killing? Would the dried-out dying beg for death? And what about the last survivor?

JoJo was gone. Dri and John scanned the water, "What happened?

John said.

"You didn't see?" Dri said.

"You were on watch," John said.

Dricursed herself. "I nodded off." she said, "How could I do that?

How could I desert him like that? He needed to be looked after."

"The splash that woke me up," John said. "I think it came from the left."

Sure enough, Jojo rose to the surface not far from where John pointed. He groaned.

There were four sharks after all. Jojo was jerked down, but he didn't go all the way under. Blood spread out from him. He looked confused. He stared at John as a shark bit his shoulder and shook him to tear away the skin. He didn’t have time to scream before another shark clamped his mouth over his head. 

He pointer toward the horizon, except there wasn't a horizon anymore. The water and sky were the same color, almost black, and all I could think about was Jojo, how lucky he was to miss what was coming.

The waves didn't break, and the clouds didn't either. The sun wasn't supposed to set for another hour, but night came early that day.

Overhead was a dark purple skin with gray veins. It slid over the sky with a definite edge, God's eyelid closing. It stretched out to the horizon in every direction.

We'd strapped ourselves in at the back of the boat, John on one side, Dri and me on the other.

John and Dri heard it before I did. Chuck-chuck-chuck.

John gripped my shoulder. I had to punch him to get his hand off me. The helicopter came close. No basket stretcher dangled down to us. No safety ropes. No Navy SEALs in high-tech wet suits.

A guy in work clothes leaned out the shotgun window with an actual shotgun and fired a long-tailed streamer into one of the logs.

The streamer pulsed fluorescent pink. Another guy leaned out with a bullhorn. He was laughing and waving, and John, Dri, and I looked at one another like, What do we do? John shrugged and waved back. The guy yelled down to us through the bullhorn,

"We're not here to rescue you."

"Truly appreciate that!" I said.

"We're spotters for the salvage crews. We're here to tag the freight. We don't have any ladders or anything to pull you up. We're short on gas and have to get back. We'll send somebody along shortly.”

When I woke, the bunk was too quiet. The wind roared inside my head. I put on the TV loud and felt better. A guy came in and said. detective by the name of Kreizler wanted to talk with me.

The detective and I sat and I rocked and told him everything or pretty much everything. He was a nice guy. "They say the odds are eighty percent that without GPS on that boat you should have died at sea," he said. "I don't know how you lasted that long. I mean, how did you not give up?"

"I gave up," I said. "It's just dumb luck I lasted."

"Where did we wind up, by the way?" I said.

"What do you mean?"

"In the ocean. Like near England or something?"

Kreizler smiled. "They found you about eighty miles away from where you left. Who knows if you were dragged out and back in with all the crazy winds, but you didn't end up far from where you started.

textpublishing's review against another edition

5.0

Paul Griffin's new rollicking YA adventure

And I think 'thrill-ride' is the word you're looking for with THAT cover.

‘This fast-paced survival adventure makes an excellent crucible for Griffin’s examination of class.’ Kirkus

‘A terrifying survival story in which past traumas are as visceral and intense as present circumstances.’
STARRED Review, Publishers Weekly

xemilyx's review against another edition

4.0

Convincing, stark, I really didn't know who was going to make it! Fast paced with a great economy to the storytelling and lots to unpack after you've finished: the morality of survival.

angelreads's review against another edition

3.0

You can find this review and more at Angel Reads
I received a copy of Adrift by Paul Griffin from Text Publishing in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way influenced by thoughts about the book.
I liked Adrift by Paul Griffin, but I didn’t love it. I really enjoyed the plot and most of the characters, but I felt that everything went too fast.
Adrift follows Matt and his best friend John on a summer journey that isn’t that they were expecting. I still don’t know if I like Matt, though the book was told from his perspective, I felt that he was really disconnected and at times I couldn’t trust him. He is sort of an omniscient narrator. Matt is the nice guy, but he is also quite boring and I think that is one of the reasons why I didn’t love the book.
John on the other hand as very intriguing and I wanted to know more about him; but he hid himself a great deal and although Matt is his best friend he doesn’t really know him well in a sense and just sees what John puts up. I wanted to hug John, he has been through quite a lot and from the start of the book; I got the idea that he is the suffer in silence kind of guy and Matt just doesn’t see this. As the book goes on Matt starts distancing himself from John and it broke my heart for John because he needs someone.
The other characters are Driana, JoJo and Stef and you know what? I didn’t really care about them. I know that this sounds bad, but I felt that Matt had no emotional connection with them which is ironic for people that have read the book. Their personalities just didn’t shine.
I also felt that they were, dare I say it; stupid. Just why, oh why would you take a boat out without checking how much fuel it has or checking if it works. At this point, no one was in trouble, but four of you go and jump in without thinking about it.
Other than that little stuff that I had everything else was quite realistic and had me turning page after page. Once they were out in the open sea, everything just seemed so much more real. I was intrigued at how the characters interacted with each other, I really thought that this was done really well. I also like how they all felt differently about what was happening and how being stranded out at sea affecting them.
I was left on my seat for most of the book, not knowing what was going to happen, asking all these questions. It was thrilling at times.
The medical and psychological aspects of Adrift was done brilliantly. It was gross, interesting and so intense. The way that the injuries were described were so disgusting, but done in a way that seemed so real. Also that fact that Matt is studying things to do with medical made it interesting; seeing him trying to figure out what to do.
I didn’t really like the writing style of Paul Griffin in Adrift. There are a lot of short sentences that ‘cut in’ of what was being said and I felt that the sentences were uncompleted. It was sentence after sentence, it didn’t flow nicely.
I was also disappointed in the ending. Yes it was realistic, but it was also a letdown. Everything was different from before; obviously, but I thought from those who survived that they would be brought closer together.
Overall, I liked Adrift, it was a fast paced, emotional thriller that kept me on the edge.

annw's review against another edition

4.0

I thought this book was wonderful. It was pacey, enjoyable and engaging. Had a bit of trouble with the point of view, so I felt like I was playing catch up with the characters. John and Matt were certainly the most interesting characters.

emilymahar's review against another edition

3.0

3.5/5

julia_rhys's review against another edition

5.0

This book was REALLY good. It's maybe not one that I think everyone should read, but one I think a good many people would benefit. There were cliches, especially by Dri. Like, cool it, but they were 17, so hey. By the end, I didn't even know who I identified with more because I identified with them all. I listened to the audio book read by the author and I think that was so important because the tones of the narration really shaped the story. Really loved it and a book I'll be reflecting on for a while.

shealennon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75