Beth O’Leary’s Swept Away is a compelling, moody romance between a complicated 31-year-old woman and her 23-year-old one-night stand who’s a sucker for complicated. It’s a story of extremes, of survival and of overcoming your worst enemy—yourself.
The action begins on page one, when Lexi and Zeke awaken after a drunken one-night stand to find themselves adrift at sea on a houseboat. In short order, panic sets in, and the tension amplifies as Lexi realizes that she’s essentially lost at sea with a stranger.
Lexi and Zeke are diametrically opposed characters: She’s “hemmed-in, muted, like someone’s dialed her down,” and he’s open and hopeful. But over the course of 11 days, conversation leads to introspection and understanding, and the realization that they’re tied together by more than just a romantic liaison. The houseboat that’s happily floating through the sea, first belonged to Zeke’s father. When his dad died, Zeke sold it to a woman who turned out to be Lexi’s mother. And when her mother died, it went to Lexi’s friend Penny, and now Zeke’s purchased it. It’s a maritime circle of life.
Lexi is prickly and curmudgeonly and set in her ways. Zeke tries repeatedly to allay her concerns over being stranded with a strange man, but he, too, is not exactly who you’d want on your team if you were stranded at sea. Yet both characters’ unflattering, impractical characteristics make them more relatable: It would be terrifying to be adrift on a houseboat when neither of you were sailors. Staying afloat isn’t just a physical goal in this story, it’s a philosophical one. As the story progresses, it’s refreshing to see that the struggles Lexi and Zeke face—against each other, against themselves and against the sea—eventually float away.
