The Swell

Kenna, the principal narrator of this disappointing thriller from Reynolds (Shiver), has traveled from her native U.K. to Sydney, Australia, to surprise her estranged best friend, Mikki, who’s about to get married. Though Mikki doesn’t welcome Kenna’s arrival, she invites Kenna to join her and her fiancé, Jack, on a pre-wedding surfing trip to a remote beach on Sorrow Bay. The two friends were passionate surfers until Kenna’s boyfriend drowned while visiting a Cornish beach with her. The traumatized Kenna’s ceasing to participate in the sport marked the start of their estrangement. Kenna’s hopes to reconnect with Mikki are threatened, though, by her misgivings about Jack and the Tribe, the community the couple belong to at the bay, whose members resent that Kenna, an outsider, now knows their secret surfing spot. Kenna begins to fear that darker secrets, possibly connected to a number of missing people, are behind the antagonism, a suspicion strengthened when Tribe members turn up dead. The early disclosure of a key reveal undercuts the tension, and genuine surprises and plausible characters are in short supply. This misfire won’t win Reynolds any new fans. Agent: Kate Burke, Blake Friedmann Literary (U.K.). (July)