Adrift
Paul Griffin
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Thriller
Themes: Seafaring Tales
****
Description
Matt and John have been best friends since forever, a bond that only grew stronger after the terrible night that left John's father dead and Matt scarred for life. They were working a summer job in Montauk at the beach with an eye toward their futures - Matt's considering Yale and a degree in forestry, to get away from the city and people, while John's aiming for trade school as an electrician - when a chance encounter with a trio of rich teens alters the trajectory of their lives... this time, in a possibly deadly direction. When their new friend Stef decides to go windsurfing at night after a house party, her cousin Driana, boyfriend JoJo, and Matt and Jeff "borrow" a neighbor's boat to rescue her - only to end up lost at sea with a dead motor, a possibly dying friend, and no way to call for help.
Review
As with the best survival stories, Adrift takes a collection of outwardly mismatched characters and throws them into a desperate situation that not only forces them to take extreme measures to stay alive, but examine pains and problems in their lives that they've been avoiding. Matt's innate compassion and urge to help others can be a blessing, but also a liability, as when he impulsively volunteers to help with ill-advised midnight rescue missions on the water despite having next to no knowledge of seamanship. John's unemotional practicality has earned him the nickname "Iceman", making him no friends (and tending to lose what few he does make), but which has dark roots that are unearthed through extreme danger and trauma. Stef, JoJo, and Driana come from the opposite side of the tracks as the two boys, with inherently different outlooks, also having unexpected and not always pleasant aspects of themselves laid bare after days without water and without hope. Over the whole story hangs an air of foreboding darkness and an almost predatory mortality, even from the first seemingly playful interactions between Matt and Driana. Not everyone survives to the end, and those who do emerge as different people, or perhaps as the people they always were beneath layers of self-deception that the survival experience strips away. There is both beauty and pain in the teens' journey, a journey that - even by the end - is clearly not complete, and possibly never will be, but which sees the survivors grow and change... often in ways they don't like. Some things, once said and done, can never be unsaid or undone. The whole makes for a solid, emotionally compelling and harrowing tale of survival at sea.