Reckless Girls

The hope of Lux McAllister, the protagonist of this diabolically plotted nail-biter from bestseller Hawkins (The Wife Upstairs), that sailing the Pacific with her hot new boyfriend, Nico Johannsen, will help put a tragic past behind her stalls in Maui, along with Nico's damaged boat. Then a pair of strangers, college besties Amma and Brittany, offer the couple a huge sum that covers the boat's repair to take them to remote, notorious Meroe Island. Insecure Lux accurately anticipates sexual tension among the four 20-somethings during the voyage; what she doesn't expect is to arrive at their middle-of-nowhere destination to find a luxury catamaran already anchored off the beach, GQ-ready twosome Jake and Eliza on deck. Later, while exploring the island, Lux is alarmed to stumble on a skull clearly too fresh to be from the 1821 shipwreck that gave Meroe its name. As tempers fray and tensions mount, Lux belatedly realizes she has unsuspectingly ventured into treacherous waters indeed. Though several of the startling twists leading up to a killer climax are as arbitrary as those in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (itself among Hawkins's apparent inspirations), this thriller still makes for dangerously addictive reading. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary. (Jan.)