Loads of people liked Katy Hays’ sundrenched (it takes place in Capri, which is pretty much the only thing I liked about it) thriller Saltwater. Told from multiple perspectives, it’s the story of a bunch of rich assholes behaving badly and maybe I’ve just had enough of that in RL to care very much about it happening on the page.

Helen Lingate is vacationing on Capri with her father, Richard, her Uncle Marcus and Aunt Naomi, her boyfriend, Teddy, and Marcus’ assistant (and Helen’s friend) Lorna. The Lingates return to the same villa every year to honour Helen’s mother Sarah’s accidental (but was it, though?) death 30 years prior.

Helen is trapped by her family’s wealth. She just wants to live her life, but she can’t. She is haunted by the family tragedy, has a relatively distant relationship with her father, and has never really made any friends until Lorna came into her life. Now the two women seem to be plotting some sort of “get-out-of-Dodge” scheme that will free them from the tangle of family obligations (Helen) and sleeping with rich old guys (Lorna). Just about the only good thing about Capri (other than, you know, the sun and endless drinking) is Ciro, the handsome son of the villa’s housekeeper, whom Helen has known and loved since she was a child.

Everyone has a secret in this book; I suppose that is what is meant to keep you turning the pages, but the problem is that I didn’t care about any of these people. Helen is 33, for God’s sake, and she is behaving as though she doesn’t have any agency at all. Seriously, I just wanted to give her a good shake. If this is all so unpalatable, just take Ciro and go. Hard to give up all that cash though. But even the cash isn’t what Helen thinks it is.

What motivates any of these people, beyond money, is hard to pinpoint. As Helen says “Money is my phantom limb. It was part of my body once. I know this because I feel its loss like an ambient current that runs up my spine, an occasional, sudden shock. Money is metabolic, a universal part of our constitution.” Um? What?

I didn’t enjoy this book, but I read it to the end because, y’know, there’s a part of me that wanted to know how it would all play out. There were a bunch of requisite twists near the end and while some readers were likely shocked and surprised, my reaction was more of the eye-roll variety. I found the writing choppy and repetitive and, like I said, it took me way longer to read this than I thought it would.

So, not for me, but I suspect lots of people would find it enjoyable.