Book Review: Lying In The Deep by Diana Urban

This is the modern feminist retelling of Agatha Christie’s Death On The Nile that I never even knew I needed till after I read every terrific page!

Let’s be honest: Death On The Nile is one of Dame Christie’s most famous books, but is one of my least favorite of her canon. It’s smart, sure, but without going into spoilers, I can safely say that I really disliked the central relationships. Diana Urban’s refreshing take on the characters updates the plot for the 21st century, paying excellent homage to the original while providing her own incredibly clever twists to make this story her own.

Our narrator Jade Miller figures that the best way to nurse her broken heart is to go full steam ahead with her plans to spend a college semester at sea, far away from where she’s enrolled at Stanford University. Having grown up poor, she’s pinched her pennies for this experience, and is looking forward to putting a lot of distance between herself and the people who betrayed her. So imagine her shock when she sees both of them getting ready to board along with her.

One of these people is her former roommate Lainey Silverton, the beautiful daughter of a pharmaceutical tycoon:

[She was] a magnet for attention and an easy flirt, the way she’d flash her radiant smile and make you feel like the sun was shining at night. She was stunning, because of course she was, with her silky platinum hair, eyes blue as the winter sky, rosy high cheekbones, and rosier full lips. Forget the money–Lainey could steal your heart just by breathing, charm you with a glance, convince you of anything. She could get whatever the hell she wanted, even if she didn’t already have it all.

 

Apparently, that included the love of my life.

Silas is Jade’s ex, and is arm in arm with Lainey as they board the Sea Voyager. A baseball star until a skiing accident put his entire Stanford career in jeopardy, he’d feared having to drop out of school and go back to a life of small town anonymity. Jade had begged Lainey to ask her powerful father to get Silas a summer internship so he could gain some industry contacts and rebuild his shaken confidence. She hadn’t expected for Lainey and Silas to get close in the process, culminating in Silas breaking up with her long distance via text before immediately blocking her number.

Seeing them together in the flesh makes Jade’s thoughts turn unerringly to murder, but when a stone nearly lands on Lainey’s head at one of their first stops on the cruise, Jade begins to reevaluate her own thirst for vengeance. Lainey, of course, does her best to avoid her former friend, but Jade can’t let go. It isn’t just that she’s hurt by what they’ve done. She genuinely doesn’t understand how or why it happened. As she explains to a new friend she makes on the ship:

“Hey, you said you like figuring out what makes people tick, right? So help me figure out what happened.”

 

He laughed. “Why are you so desperate for a reason?”

 

“Because the alternative is that the two people I loved most betrayed me for absolutely no reason.” I could no longer mask the tremor in my voice. “Because the alternative is that I have to hate them.”

 

That, and I didn’t want to daydream about murder anymore.

When people start dying, Jade finds herself in the uncomfortable position of being prime suspect in a murder she once fantasized about committing herself. Refusing to passively accept this role, she begins investigating, not only to figure out whodunnit but also in hopes of figuring out how two people she loved and trusted so much could hurt her so badly. As she sleuths her way to the shocking truth, she’ll discover that not all secrets should see the light of day, and that some are best left relegated to the depths of the ocean.

When I first heard that Ms. Urban was reimagining this story, I did not expect to fall wholeheartedly in love with her characters, or to be as impressed as I am by how she refashioned this tale to satisfy the hearts of readers tired of female rivalry tropes. To go into specifics would be to risk spoiling a masterful update of the classic that hits the original’s most important beats while also fashioning a truly absorbing Young Adult mystery. I loved it, and hope you will, too.