What We Did to Survive by Megan Lally

e-ARC, 279 pages
Release Date: March 31, 2026
Published by: Sourcebooks Fire
Read from: March 1 – April 3, 2026
 Stand-alone 
Source: Netgalley (I received this e-ARC free from the publisher and Netgalley. I also got a finished copy from TLA. This did nothing to influence my review!)
Content Warning: Violence, Death, Murder, Blood, Fire/Fire Injury, Injury/Injury Detail, Vomit, Adult/Minor Relationship, Grief
For Readers of: Auto-Buy Authors, Contemporary, DEAR, e-ARC, Sparkly Cover, Most Anticipated, Own, Realistic Fiction, So Good I Read the Acknowledgements, Thrillers, YA

      A vacation in paradise turns deadly when four teens’ sailing charter hits stormy seas in this propulsive new thriller from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Megan Lally!
     Hannah is having an incredible spring break. A week at a resort in Mexico with her best friend Emmy and her family is perfect for de-stressing from senior year, even if it’s awkward being around Emmy’s older brother, Jackson, who she’s had a crush on for as long as she can remember.
     Still, the beach is gorgeous. So is the guy they meet in the surf. Except Hannah is now the third wheel in Emmy’s vacation romance.
     Eager to impress Emmy, her wealthy new boyfriend charters a private sailboat to make the most of their last day in paradise, and Hannah and Jackson are invited along. As the clouds roll in and the skies darken, their boat is the only one leaving the marina. And the further they get into open water, the more unsettled Hannah becomes. A storm is brewing onboard that’s as deadly as the one racing toward them. Forget surviving graduation. Who will make it back to land alive?

*MY THOUGHTS*

Whew chile the crazy that was in this damn book. I got mad at everybody smh lol Literally none of them were making sense and the one that was they didn’t listen to. I’ll give you a heads up… Everyone in this book was terrible. And that’s not even a spoiler

Ok so I say this with every book from Lally, but this one was for sure my favorite. I am terrified of books with a lot of the unknown, like the deep water and deep space, so this was already terrifying for me. But when everyone willingly started acting crazy instead of just trying to get to land first, I was terrified AND mad. Because why would you do that? The plot is fast moving and so suspenseful. I mean so much so I almost bit my nails off!

As for the characters, I hated almost all of them. Hannah was an enabler. She let that dumb ass think she was in charge and nearly got all of them killed. She let that fool think she found the one and LOOK. Idk why they chose to keep infantilizing her, but they did and it annoyed me to no end. Then the fact that they got on the boat in the first place? There was nothing said that would have made me get on it smh I was so mad that they didn’t like grow a spine. She acted like she was mad because Hannah took the safe route. Like girl just because you like chaos doesn’t mean everyone has to. Someone has to make some sense. Don’t get me started on anyone else. They all were crazy. As for Ben, I have never wanted to smack someone so bad in my life. I know violence solves nothing, but idk it seemed like for him it maybe could have. At the very least it would have made me feel better lol

The pacing in this did me IN tho! It was good once it started going, but the second half and the ending was bananas. I wish I could show y’all my notes. I kept saying things a little before it happened and then yelling out loud, “I TOLD YOU!” This book was INTENSE. I had to keep taking breaks lol And the plot twist? Yo I legit put the book down and started thinking back and looking for the clues. I figured out the most obvious as soon as I realized. And then I was crying lol Idk the last time I cried over a thriller? Wild.

There’s so much more I want to say about this, but I don’t want to spoil it. I will say this tho, I enjoyed tf outta this book and so far I think it’s my favorite thriller that I’ve read so far this year. If you’re someone that doesn’t deep water, this won’t bother you as much as it did me, but this creeped me tf out so take what I said with a grain of salt. And if you don’t enjoy it as much as me, that’s ok too. I just want you to try because Lordt this had me stressed!

Overall, I give this