Day Four: A Novel

by Sarah Lotz

Overview

Step aboard "the cruise ship from hell" (Stephen King) in this "satirical scream of a novel" (New York Times Book Review).

Hundreds of pleasure-seekers stream aboard The Beautiful Dreamer cruise ship for five days of cut-price fun in the Caribbean sun. On the fourth day, disaster strikes: smoke roils out of the engine room, and the ship is stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon supplies run low, a virus plagues the ship, and there are whispered rumors that the cabins on the lower decks are haunted by shadowy figures. Irritation escalates to panic, the crew loses control, factions form, and violent chaos erupts among the survivors.

When, at last, the ship is spotted drifting off the coast of Key West, the world's press reports it empty. But the gloomy headlines may be covering up an even more disturbing reality. Day Four is a heart-racing tale from "a ferociously imaginative storyteller" (Lauren Beukes).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316242950
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	959,128
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sarah Lotz is a screenwriter and novelist with a fondness for the macabre and fake names. She lives in Cape Town with her family and other animals.

Editorial Reviews

04/06/2015
Disaster strikes a pleasure boat, The Beautiful Dreamer, on the fourth day of a Caribbean cruise in Lotz’s tedious thriller, her second novel for adults (after 2014’s The Three). A young woman is murdered in her cabin, The Beautiful Dreamer comes to a standstill, its satellite positioning and radio systems go down, and normally reliable rescue boats fail to appear. Trapped with little to amuse them, the passengers increasingly become enthralled with Celine del Ray, a celebrity medium on board. The situation steadily deteriorates: food becomes scarce, ghosts and demons start appearing, and a virulent sickness spreads among the crew and passengers. Some interesting side stories delve into the personal lives of those aboard, but these are overwhelmed by graphic and repetitive descriptions of the virus, the ship’s unsterile conditions, the ghostly apparitions, and vomit, as well as by too many undeveloped characters. The murder mystery’s precipitous and unconvincing resolution will disappoint those readers who persevere to the end. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath & Company. (June)

Publishers Weekly

PRAISE FOR THE THREE

"Lotz is a ferociously imaginative storyteller whose twisty plots will kick the stairs out from under you. She's a talent to watch."—Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls

"The Three is really wonderful, a mix of Michael Crichton and Shirley Jackson. Hard to put down and vastly entertaining."—Stephen King

From the Publisher

★ 06/15/2015
Lotz's (The Three) new thriller is creepy, memorable, and definitely not a book to bring on your next cruise vacation. The novel opens aboard The Beautiful Dreamer, a cruise ship on a five-day New Year's excursion to the Caribbean. The first days of the trip are uneventful, but an incident on day four leaves the vessel dead in the water and unable to contact the outside world. On board, a cast of characters—an eerily prescient psychic and her assistant, a blogger, a serial rapist, a pair of elderly widows, and various members of the crew—try to cope with this unfortunate turn of events. However, as the situation worsens, passengers must defend themselves against dangers both mundane (a rapidly spreading virus) and otherworldly (ghostly apparitions and strange events). VERDICT A stranded cruise ship is the perfect setting for all manner of horrors, both real and imagined. As in her earlier book, Lotz incorporates realistic elements into her story that will keep readers engaged and turning the pages until the very end. Fans of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, get ready to set sail.—Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins

Library Journal

The cruise ship BEAUTIFUL DREAMER promises its passengers a week of sun and fun in the Caribbean. But on the fourth day out the ship becomes stranded, and that’s just the beginning of the nightmare. To voice the denizens of the ship, narrator Penelope Rawlins has to flit through a verbal global gazetteer, and she does so with aplomb. As supplies dwindle, plumbing fails, and rumors circulate about ghosts on the lower decks, Rawlins is eerily convincing as medium Selene Delray and equally so as an Indian security guard, an Irish nurse, and a South African doctor, among others. Genuinely chilling at times, this is an unusual thriller superbly voiced. C.A.T. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2015 - AudioFile

2015-04-04
After three days of fun, sun, and excess, a cruise ship suddenly loses all contact with the outside world. The beleaguered passengers and crew soon find themselves fighting off the norovirus, lots of creepy noises, a few ghosts, and, eventually, each other.Lotz's (The Three, 2014) horror-thriller begins as an intriguing take on the classic "locked room" mystery since, as weird things begin to happen, there is no way on or off the ship. She employs this claustrophobic feeling very effectively at first, also developing the fear factor by exploring the mind of a serial murderer on board and by introducing Celine Del Ray, a mostly fake medium who suddenly begins to show signs of true spirit possession just as the ship gets lost (on New Year's Eve). But as every short chapter ends with a bang (sometimes literally), the novel begins to feel both formulaic and unfocused. The six or seven characters who drive the narrative (the chapters rotate among them) aren't interesting enough to carry the reader with them, nor is the mystery deep enough to sustain or encourage their development. By the time the engines start working again and Lotz switches her style to newspaper articles and interviews, it feels like a gimmick with no payoff. In the end, it's still pretty unclear whom or what Celine was channeling, but apparently it's one step up from demonic possession—malevolent but not up to dragging anyone down to hell. There's another disturbing side to this novel: the basis for the plot might be taken from some recent headlines about disappeared airplanes, and there's something a bit too salacious about the way the story unfolds when one has those current losses in mind. A little creepy but juggling too many narrative (and horror-movie) threads.

Kirkus Reviews