The Living

de la Pena, Matt. The Living. 2013. 320p. ISBN 9780385741200. Available as an eBook on Overdrive.

Shy would never have been able to afford a cruise, but the teen is excited to begin working on a cruise ship for the summer months. His grandmother recently died of Romero disease, a deadly virus similar to Ebola that kills its victim within hours, and, since she was the main breadwinner for the family, money is now tight. Shy figures he’ll earn good money, get great tips from people who don’t know the value of a dollar, eat free food, and even meet beautiful girls in bikinis since his main assignment is the pool deck.

On his first cruise, however, he encounters a man that confides in him, telling Shy he’s done many wrong things and apologizes to him before jumping overboard. The incident startles Shy, and he can’t shake it off. When, on the next cruise, his friend tell him a man has been asking questions about him and the incident, Shy becomes suspicious. Who would want to investigate him?

Meanwhile, he’s falling hard for Carmen, who’s also from his hard-hit part of town south of San Diego. But she’s engaged, so Shy knows she’s off limits. He also meets two girls during this second cruise. Both of them are snobs and make fun of him.

When a severe storm strikes the ship, Shy is not too worried about the survival of the ship. Clearing the deck that evening, he comes upon those two girls again. And one of them is crying. She tells him her father’s got a photo of him, how can he explain that? Shy has no idea why her father would possess this photo. Combined with the presence of the strange man in the black suit, and the ranksack of his room, Shy is now worried.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to think any further. Soon after the storm, a massive earthquake beyond anything ever measured strikes California, destroying most of the coast. Suddenly the ship faces the largest set of tsunami waves, and not even a large cruise ship can hope to survive it intact. Shy now finds himself in a fight against nature that will be hard to win…

This book is a great complement to The Perfect Storm, another ship disaster, and fans will enjoy this survival story.