S. F. Prescott

Atmospherically charged and tense!

Kevin C. Morris is an engineer, writer, boater, pilot, entrepreneur, and deckhand. Born and raised in Texas, he has called Portland, Oregon, home for the past forty years, but spends summers leading boating expeditions up the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska. Untamed Coast is Morris’s first novel.

Untamed Coast by Kevin C. Morris is a tense, atmospheric novel set in the Alaskan wilderness. Marked on Netgalley as general / women’s fiction, I was pleasantly surprised by the tension threaded throughout, and the unfolding mysteries across POVs/timelines. The narrative structure used in the book is definitely something I gravitate toward and Morris did an amazing job at invoking curiosity. The characters and their storylines were all unique and I was captivated by each one, my favorite being Anya’s.

The setting felt so immersive, almost like its own character, and I loved the three timelines spanning across different decades, which added an interesting layer to the story. I always enjoy the structure of books like this, and can’t wait to find out how the characters’ lives will finally intersect—it adds a lot of tension for me. This was definitely a slower burn than I prefer, but the author’s voice was compelling and kept me turning the pages. I can’t wait for more!

Synopsis:

After the loss of his wife, Marconi Franco is content drifting alone on his boat through the isolated waters of Southeast Alaska with no real destination in mind. But when a mysterious distress signal cuts through the static on his radio one sleepless night, Marco feels an overwhelming pull to help the woman whose plea he heard—a pull he can’t explain or ignore.

His search for the missing woman draws him to Radioville, an abandoned 1930s communication outpost now decaying on an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. There, Marco begins uncovering fragments of a story long forgotten: a Depression-era theft, a shattered marriage, and a disturbing pattern of disappearances. As he sifts through the past, his own grief starts to mirror the tragedies that echo across decades, and his search draws the attention of someone determined to keep the truth buried.