Clara’s Verdict
Kayte Nunn has written a thriller with a superb structural idea at the centre of it: put a dysfunctional billionaire family and the crew who serve them on a single boat in the Mediterranean, give everybody a secret, and then take the boat away. The Yacht runs eight hours and twenty-seven minutes and it is paced like something designed to be finished in two sittings, which several reviewers duly did.
What I admire most is the discipline of the point-of-view scheme. The story is told through a rotating set of perspectives labelled by function rather than by name, the Deckie, the Trophy Wife, the Detective among them, and that choice does something clever. It tells you immediately how these people are seen before you learn who they actually are, and the gap between the label and the person is where most of the book’s pleasure lives. A 4.3 average from only 84 ratings is a small sample, so I would treat it as an early signal rather than a settled verdict, but the enthusiasm in those reviews is real.
About the Audiobook
The listing itself gives almost nothing away, and I imagine that is deliberate. It offers a list rather than a plot: a man on the edge, a woman bent on revenge, a cheating husband, a desperate wife, a property empire close to collapse, a family at loggerheads, and a predator hiding in plain sight. Then it asks who will sink and who will swim. It is an effective piece of teasing, though it does leave a prospective listener with very little to judge.
Readers have been more forthcoming. The family at the centre is headed by the property billionaire Evan Thyssen, and the book opens with the delivery of his latest status symbol, a new luxury yacht intended for a few weeks of sailing around the Mediterranean. What follows is a portrait of an extremely wealthy family whose public composure is doing an enormous amount of work. The predator promised on the listing is aboard. So, eventually, is the water.
The construction is smart in a way that suits audio specifically. Short chapters, frequent perspective changes, and an enclosed setting mean you are never more than a few minutes from a shift, and the format gives you natural places to stop without ever quite wanting to. The cast is large, the twists are frequent, and the plot keeps rearranging itself just as you think you have the shape of it. This is a standalone with no prior reading required.
The Narration
Beth Lilly carries the whole thing alone, and the multi-perspective structure makes that a considerably harder assignment than the running time suggests. It is not a book with two alternating narrators. It moves between a substantial number of viewpoint characters, several of whom are introduced by role rather than by name, which means a listener frequently has to work out whose head they are in from the voice alone before any context arrives.
That places the entire burden of orientation on the reader, and it is the single thing I would judge this performance by. Lilly has to give the Deckie, the Trophy Wife and the Detective distinct and immediately recognisable registers, and she has to sustain them across eight hours while the chapters get shorter and the switches get faster in the final third. She manages it, and the trick is that she works with class, age and confidence rather than with accent alone, so the differentiation holds up even in short sections where there is not much dialogue to establish anyone.
The other requirement is the setting, and here the reading is at its best. The Mediterranean sequences want a particular quality of ease, the sound of people for whom this is normal, and Lilly finds it without tipping into languor. When the atmosphere turns, the change is handled through pace rather than through volume, which is the more effective choice. If I have a note, it is that one or two of the minor crew members sit close enough together to require a moment’s thought early on. It settles quickly.
What Readers Say
Eighty-four ratings is a small enough pool that I would not lean on the number too heavily, but the written reviews are detailed and consistent about what works. Sez read it in just under twenty-four hours and said simply “I just couldn’t put this down”.
This really is a dysfunctional family with corruption and toxicity aplenty. Everything is for appearances, however below the surface there are affairs, secrets and financial problems.
Karen gave it four stars and wrote by far the fullest account available, which is where most of the plot detail in this piece comes from, since she sets out the multiple perspectives, the Thyssen family and the Mediterranean setting properly. Another reviewer praised “the shortish chapters in this fast paced story” and made the point that “everyone on board has secrets and things they don’t want the others to find out about”, adding that the twists kept arriving just as they thought they had it all figured out. That same reader particularly enjoyed the setting, being fond of books set on cruise ships and yachts generally, and thought the author had got the atmosphere right.
Nobody has yet commented on the narration in either direction, which given the recency of the release is unsurprising rather than telling.
Who Should Listen?
This is holiday listening in the most literal sense, and I mean that as a compliment rather than a dismissal. Eight and a half hours, a closed setting, a wealthy family behaving appallingly, and a structure that keeps handing you a new pair of eyes: it is precisely calibrated for a long flight, a poolside week or the fortnight before one when you want to be somewhere else already.
It will suit anyone who enjoys the enclosed-setting thriller, where the suspect list is fixed by the walls of the place, and anyone who likes multiple perspectives handled properly rather than as a gimmick. The short chapters mean you can stop and restart without losing the thread, and Lilly’s performance is a genuine reason to choose the audio over the page given how much the voice work does to keep the cast straight.
Two things to weigh. The large cast asks for some attention in the opening hour while you work out who everyone is, so do not begin it half-asleep. And the content includes a predator among the characters, so there is material here that goes darker than the glossy Mediterranean packaging implies. With those noted, it is a well-built, briskly told thriller that does exactly what it promises, and its climb up the UK chart is straightforwardly deserved.
