Adrift: The gripping new crime thriller from the author of The Last Thing to Burn and The Light at the End of the World

· Hachette UK
14 reviews
Ebook
400
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

'Haunting, heartbreaking, quietly terrifying. Unforgettable' CHRIS WHITAKER
'Devastatingly good. Tense as all the best thrillers are, but with an emotional heft that will leave you deeply moved. Will Dean's storytelling just gets better and better' JENNIE GODFREY
'Vivid, heartbreaking, and written with a deep understanding of how complex a family's love can be, Adrift is pure suspense from start to finish' JANE CASEY

Three of them adrift on the narrowboat.
Mother, son, and wickedness.

Peggy Jenkins and her teenage son, Samson, live on a remote stretch of canal in the Midlands. She is a writer and he is a schoolboy. Together, they battle against the hardness and manipulation of the man they live with. To the outside world he is a husband and father. To them, he is a captor.

Their lives are tightly controlled; if any perceived threat appears, their mooring is moved further down the canal, further away from civilisation. Until the day when the power suddenly shifts, and nothing can be the same again.

The author of the 'master class in suspense' (Shari Lapena, Sunday Times bestselling author) The Last Thing to Burn returns with a high-tension thriller about a family's descent into darkness that is perfect for fans of Denis Lehane and Lisa Jewell.

Early readers are loving ADRIFT:

'Easy 5 stars! This book has such a sinister, chilling slow burn, and then BAM! It's brilliantly character-driven, claustrophobic, and tense' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'This is a dark, and uncomfortable read and such an emotional one. I was hooked from the start... This book is going to be big 10/10 from me' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'The tension in this book is extreme, I wanted to find the barge and scream at Peggy and Samson to leave, such is the strength of Will Dean's writing' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'I found the characters to be drawn beautifully, while contained in a story that was both riveting and harrowing, The book manages to make the hairs stand up on your skin as you read it. Exquisite' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'Haunting, heartbreaking, quietly terrifying. Unforgettable' CHRIS WHITAKER 'Devastatingly good. Tense as all the best thrillers are, but with an emotional heft that will leave you deeply moved. Will Dean's storytelling just gets better and better' JENNIE GODFREY 'Vivid, heartbreaking, and writte...

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Ratings and reviews

14 reviews
Seana Fox
July 2, 2026
loved this book , it really pulls at your heart strings. It makes you feel uncomfortable reading in parts due too the mistreatment of people. A great read , highly recommend.
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David Barnes
June 28, 2026
This could be a difficult subject to read. but the author, I believe, has written a story in which he has understood the main characters.
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Steve Elliott
June 1, 2026
very good, looked forward to catching up with the story every time I had to put it down.
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About the author

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands and had lived in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying Law at the LSE and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a house in a boggy clearing at the centre of a vast elk forest, and it's from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. His debut novel in the Tuva Moodyson series, Dark Pines, was selected for Zoe Ball's Book Club, shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize and named a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. Red Snow was published in January 2019 and won Best Independent Voice at the Amazon Publishing Readers' Awards, 2019. Black River was shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Award in 2021. Will also writes standalone thrillers: The Last Thing to Burn, First Born, the top twenty hardback bestseller The Last Passenger and One at a Time.
Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands and had lived in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying Law at the LSE and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a house in a boggy clearing at the centre of a vast elk forest, and it's from this base that h...

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