The Last Time We Drowned by Saratoga Schaefer Review: A Razor-Sharp Locked-Yacht Thriller

The Last Time We Drowned centers on Charlie Engles, a bookstagrammer who accepts what initially appears to be a lucrative opportunity: a spot aboard a luxury yacht headed for Ligia Island, surrounded by a coterie of high-profile social-media influencers. The novel's premise is established with brisk urgency; as an excerpted passage published by Cosmopolitan reads, one character snaps at Charlie, "I don't like wasting time. You're here, your shit is here, my boat is in the harbor. Ligia Island is forty minutes away. You said you need the money. Why wait? You in, or what?" That snap-cut energy carries the setup forward: six influencers, one vessel, and a situation that quickly transforms from glamorous retreat into something far more menacing. The locked-room-at-sea structure — a scenario with deep roots in classic mystery fiction — gives Schaefer a pressure cooker in which to stage their brand of escalating dread.

Ashley Winstead, the USA Today-bestselling author of This Book Will Bury Me, has described the novel as delivering "Agatha Christie for the Instagram age in this deliciously soapy saga," pointing to a core tension that gives the book its cultural bite: the collision of curated online performance with genuine mortal stakes. Schaefer is not simply using influencer culture as a set dressing; the dark underbelly of wealth and the mechanics of "mean-girl" social hierarchies are, per the book's reception, integral to its architecture. This positions The Last Time We Drowned within a growing strand of thriller fiction that treats social media not merely as backdrop but as a system of power with real, dangerous consequences — a thematic territory Schaefer had already explored in Trad Wife, their previous novel.

critics described the novel as "an addictive, page-turning thriller with snappy dialogue, biting prose, a deeply felt sense of place, and an incredibly complicated, flawed protagonist with a big heart" — a characterization that isolates several distinct craft virtues at once. Charlie Engles is positioned as an outsider who does not naturally belong among the influencer class she's been dropped into, and readers and critics responding on NetGalley noted that Schaefer structures the novel deliberately: a more measured first half builds character and setting, while the second half accelerates into fast-paced twists and unexpected character decisions. Cosmopolitan called it "an incredible, one-of-a-kind psychological thriller that you won't be able to put down until the very last page." The novel also carries what one NetGalley reader described as a "deeper, more layered" quality than the genre typically promises — a compliment that speaks to Schaefer's ability to make the psychological machinery feel earned rather than mechanical.

A consistent thread in the novel's early reception is the presence of horror influences bleeding through the mystery-thriller frame. Reviewers at NetGalley and Cape & Tights, who had access to advance copies, noted that while The Last Time We Drowned is firmly a mystery thriller, Schaefer's signature "creeping sense of tension and dread" — honed across Serial Killer Support Group and the body-horror inflections of Trad Wife — seeps into this new setting. Cape & Tights characterized the book as a "multilevel thriller" that blends elements of the ghost story and the locked-room mystery with psychological suspense and social commentary. This genre layering is part of what distinguishes the book from a more conventional beach thriller: readers who arrived expecting something light and frothy, per multiple advance responses, found the darkness ran considerably deeper than the glittering yacht premise suggested.

The Last Time We Drowned is well suited to readers drawn to character-driven psychological thrillers with literary ambitions — particularly those who found Schaefer's earlier work compelling and are ready for them to operate within a more plot-driven mystery structure. The queer identity of the protagonist is noted in the author's own framing of the book as "compelling, queer, dark-and-deep," adding a dimension of representation that distinguishes Charlie further from the thriller genre's more conventional protagonists. Readers who prefer pure-speed plotting with minimal atmospheric groundwork may find the novel's more deliberate first half requires patience before the thriller mechanics fully engage. But for readers who prize a "deeply felt sense of place" —critical reception's phrase — and a protagonist whose flaws feel genuinely earned rather than decorative, Schaefer's third novel makes a strong case that their range continues to expand with each book.