A brilliant summer psychological thriller. Absolutely love this genre. Set ina beautiful location, with dark, unpredictable and mistrustful characters. Highly recommended for your next holiday read 📚 🌞

A gorgeous location combined with some disturbing, exciting characters, makes this one fantabulous whodunnit. If the island wasn’t so full of problems, I would have jetted off their right now. Sara’s writing keeps you gripped until the very end, and also guessing until the final pages. I found it fun to read!

Set in Thailand on the lush tropical resort island of Koh Sang, this is a good, twisty thriller. The story revolves around 2 women - Cass, a dive instructor at the resort, and Brooke, a travel influencer / blogger. The story is a little slow at the beginning, but it does gain momentum and develops a few unseen twists along the way. Cass takes a small group to one of their final dives and finds resort guest Lucy dead. It appears to be foul play. Another dive student Daniel is killed and both Cass and Brooke are trying to figure out what is going on. The story is revealed in bits and pieces as is the backstory of both women. The supporting characters all have nebulous pasts, so there's no shortage of suspects. While I had *some* of the mystery figured out fairly early, the end gives it a final tweak and turns it all around. I liked this story - it was a good debut novel.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for providing an ARC of this good mystery.

I am a HUGE fan of Thailand so any chance to be whisked off to Thai paradise is a big fat yes from me. So you can imagine how excited I was to be sent a proof of The Dive. We follow scuba instructor Cass and influencer Brooke on the stunning fictional island of Koh Sang where things go terrifyingly wrong very quickly. As soon as the first body is discovered we start to suspect that paradise comes at a price and someone is determined to keep these deadly secrets no matter the cost.

The tension was unreal. I loved all the clever twists and turns and didn't want it to end!

Took me a while to get into this book and get a handle on the characters. A bit slow in parts but the pace does ramp up a bit towards the end. It’s well written and nicely descriptive - clearly the author has visited this part of the world. All a bit run of the mill for me with a storyline that’s been done before however the ending of this book is very good and one I didn’t predict. Good debut

The dive is a story from two different voices, we have Cass a “permanent” who is a diving instructor on a fictitious Thai island known as Koh Sang, she is engaged to Logan the owner of a bar, together they have the perfect life, or so they want you to think. She gets the feeling she is being watched and notes start appearing but that is just the beginning, next she finds a body and her life begins to unravel once again.

Our next voice is Brooke, she arrived as a ditzy Instagram influencer with hidden dreams of joining the world of journalism. Once the body count increases she thinks she has found her story to rocket her in to being a big time journalist, then danger comes a little too close to home!

I really enjoyed getting to know the characters in this story, there were enough of them to offer up different dynamics to the group but not too many that you were left thinking “who was that again” The tension was captured throughout and the ending wasn’t rushed, I thought the twists along the way were great and so unexpected right up to the end.
The only downside to this book would be, despite the dead bodies, the idilic setting that was described has made me desperate to visit Thailand, I could almost feel myself stood in the resort looking out over the water come rain or shine. It reminded me very much of my trip to Jamaica a few years ago.

The Dive by Sarah Ochs is a thriller book that will definitely keep you on the edge of your seat and want to keep turning the pages.

So much tension and suspense, the dive is told in two different POVS, we have Cass who is a diving instructor and is engaged to Logan the owner of the bar and everything for her is just peaceful and feels right for her but as we go further into the book we learn she is running from a past.. the past being a murder case and that her real name isn’t her biological name. Tension starts amping up as she finds one of her students dead and then more start showing up dead. What we all thought was an accident isn’t, there I something wrong and horrible going on.

The other main characters besides Cass is Brook, she has come to Koh Sang disguising herself as a guest but in reality she knows something about Cass and is contempt on stalking her as she has really doesn’t like her from a past experience that has stayed with her for years but what we don’t know what that is yet. Brook is an influencer and after finding out about the bodies turning up she is going to try and get the answers to why it is happening and publish it so she can get her name out there and talked about.

As the book progresses there is so much we learn about Cass and Brook, tension mounts and non stop suspense with more deaths happening. You will constantly keep guessing and when you think you’ve got it right you’ll be quickly mistaken. This book is so amazingly written and engrosses you right into it until the very end.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK for the copy on this arc in exchange of an honest review.

5*

"Thriller" is a genre that promises to keep readers on the edge of their seats, and this definitely delivers. From the very first page, the tension is palpable, and the plot twists and turns in unexpected ways, making it difficult to put the book down. The characters are well-developed and the author does an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing as to who can be trusted and who is hiding something. The pacing is spot-on, with just the right amount of action and suspense to keep the reader engaged. The writing style is gripping and evocative, making it easy to visualise the scenes and feel the emotions of the characters. The author's attention to detail and ability to create a believable world adds to the overall experience of the book. Overall, this is an excellent example of the thriller genre. It's a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the very end and is sure to satisfy fans of the genre. Highly recommended for anyone who loves a good suspenseful read. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book. This was an excellent read.
Thoroughly recommended

I loved this! The story is told from 2 povs. Cass, a diving instructor living on a beautiful Thai Island and Brooke, an influencer visiting for content. But both woman have secrets and hidden pasts. As do many of the staff. Bodies start to pile up and the twists just keep coming. Highly recommend.

A beautiful setting and really well written, gripping read. I loved the darkness under the surface in paradise vibe and the unraveling of what you think you know. Would recommend.

Overall not a bad read but it did take me a while to get into the storyline and I found it a bit slow in parts.

I like to be gripped by a book but unfortunately this didn't do it for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for this ARC.

The Dive Sara Ochs
5 stars

What an amazing debut!

This book was amazing and what a great debut for Ms Ochs. It is set in a fictional Thai island paradise where guests relax, dive and snorkel by day and party with drinks and drugs by night.

The permanents, as they are known, are the guides and bartenders and we are introduced to Cass who is a diving instructor. At the beginning of the story she has just become engaged to Logan, the owner of the bar and everything in her life has fallen into place. Cass is one of the main storytellers and we learn that she has fled from a murder case and changed her name. Everything starts to unravel when she discovers a body of one of her pupils, Lucy, at the bottom of the cove where she is teaching. A few weeks previously another guest, Jacinta, had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff but this had been considered an accident at the time.

The other main character who tells the story through her eyes is Brook who has come to Koh Sang masquerading as a guest but in reality is stalking Cass as she has found out her real identity and also hates her for a previous experience that has affected Brook for many years.
Brook is now an influencer and is trying to get to the bottom of the events happening so she can publish them and make her name.

We learn about both Cass and Brook’s stories and the tension mounts as more deaths occur. This book was very clever at leading you in one direction, making you decide who is to blame but then changing your mind. I really enjoyed this book and was absolutely stunned by the epilogue. I will definitely be looking out for any further books by this author.




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Karen Deborah
Reviewer for Net Galley

I was so suprised to see Thailand in a different light than usual! Not a perfect place to live, not pictareque views, but small island full of killing secrets and dangerous people hiding their dark desires.

Definitely, engaging. Magnificent even, cause it is so fresh, so complicated and complex at the same time, that you are on the verge all the time trying to solve this mystery and find what exactly is going on in this idyllic place.

5/5! Reeeally good and loooking forward to more stories like thisss.

For whatever reason I struggled a bit to get going with this one - I don't know if its because the story started in a different way to what I was anticipating or if I struggled with the authors style but I kept going and did enjoy this.

There are a lot of twists and slowly revealed secrets as we do through this double POV view story following Cass our diving instructor and Brooke who's an influencer.

Some of it felt a little bit cliche for a book in this genre - the huge storm isolating the island for example feels like it has been done a lot recently but it did add the extra level of tension the author was looking for.

A middle of the road read for me I think.

Wow. What an innovative and interesting thriller that had me on the edge of my seat.

Ochs is a fantastic writer, who developed dimensional and interesting characters. That made me even more attached to the turn out of the book!

Unreal!

Thanks must go to the publisher, Netgalley and Sara Ochs for the ARC of ‘The Dive’.

What starts off as a well written novel set on a picturesque Thai island quickly turns into a gripping twisty psychological thriller. The turns and reveal towards the end left me gobsmacked as I hadn’t predicted it. But the ultimate reveal in the final chapter really solidifies this book as one of the ones to watch for 2023!

The Dive is a well written fast paced thriller that had me hooked from start to finish. It’s full of twists and lots of red herrings to throw you off the track to working out what is happening. Yes the ending was a little predictable but I still loved every bit of it.

I loved the setting, a little island in Thailand, and some of the beautiful descriptions of the island.

The characters are well done. You never know who to trust as all are hiding from their pasts and are also hiding secrets from each other. There are a number of characters that were unlikeable at the start of the book but by the end my opinions of them change. I can’t say too much about them but you will see what I mean if you decide to pick this one up.

This a great debut novel and can’t wait to see what Sara Ochs writes next. This is definitely a thriller author to look out for!!

I would like to than NetGalley and the publishers for my eARC and for the opportunity to share my honest and unbiased thoughts.

My Rating:
4.5 stars

This was a very fun and well paced thriller. Billed as ‘The Guest List meets The Beach’ I had some high hopes.
It didn’t disappoint.
This is a perfect laid back read. The different points of view are easy to follow, character backstories emerge at just the right pace throughout the story. The main story arc is compelling and has twist turns and some great ‘just a couple more pages’ moments.
You can can pick up and put down the book easily without loosing track and for that reason it’s perfect for travel or commuting.

A bit slow to get into properly but it began to grow on me and I really enjoyed it. Always prefer it when you get more than one pov in a book and this was told from the perspective of two different women, who funnily where both likeable.
A lot of characters with a lot of secrets, this book will def keep you reading and guessing.