The Plunge by Lila Raicek [Book Review]

The scenery is gorgeous, the relationships are a disaster, and everyone could probably use a long nap and a TED Talk on boundaries. Welcome to The Plunge.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Apparently, grief looks much better with expensive apartments, dangerous people, and a trip to Lake Como.

At least, that’s one possible takeaway from The Plunge by playwright Lila Raicek, a novel about loss, desire, reinvention, and the questionable things we do when we sit quietly with feelings that sound absolutely unbearable.

Raicek can write. The atmosphere is seductive. Liv is messy in ways I appreciated. But I kept waiting for the tension to tighten its grip, and it never quite did.

A Bad Decision Spiral

Liv returns to New York City after the sudden death of her fiancé, carrying plenty of grief and baggage. She ends up staying in the maid’s room of a former mentor’s apartment until she meets Damon and Isabel.

Damon is a charismatic jewelry designer. Isabel is the beguiling older widow who’s just as taken with him. Their relationship is complicated, provocative, and the sort of situation an emotionally stable person would approach with caution.

Liv, naturally, dives straight in.

Soon, her lonely nights have been replaced by parties, sex, obsession, weekends on the East End, and eventually Italy. Which sounds glamorous until you remember that emotional collapse is still emotional collapse even when the scenery is spectacular.

What I liked most about The Plunge is that Raicek understands grief doesn’t follow rules.

Liv isn’t steadily rebuilding her life or moving through neat stages of healing. She is lonely, reckless, impulsive, horny, angry, and determined to keep moving fast enough that maybe the pain won’t catch up to her.

Spoiler alert: it does.

It’s Complicated

I appreciated that the book never seemed overly concerned with making Liv an uncomplicated, easily likable protagonist. She is grieving and vulnerable, but she can also be frustrating, selfish, obsessive, and deeply questionable in her choices.

That made her more interesting to me.

There is something refreshing about a female character being allowed to want things badly without the story immediately turning those desires into a lesson about empowerment or self-discovery.

Sometimes desire is messy and dangerous. And sometimes we convince ourselves something is intimacy when it’s actually unhealthy obsession.

The Vibes Are There

Raicek’s prose is sharp, lush, and occasionally dangerous enough to make even Liv’s worst decisions feel seductive.

There were sentences I wanted to underline.

There were also moments when I cared more about the writing than where the plot was actually going.

The atmosphere, though? Immaculate.

Expensive Manhattan apartments. Beautiful people behaving badly. Complicated sexual dynamics. Long Island weekends. Lake Como. Emotional ruin.

For a brief moment, The Plunge had me wondering whether my own personal crises might improve with access to an Italian villa.

Probably not. But I remain open to research funding.

Is The Plunge Really a Thriller?

Here is where the book lost me a little.

Calling The Plunge a thriller feels generous.

There are threats. There are secrets. Danger lurks around Liv’s past. Rex brings a genuinely unsettling presence into the story.

But the novel is far more interested in Liv’s emotional unraveling, her relationships, and the atmosphere around her than in building sustained suspense.

That is not necessarily a problem.

It becomes a problem when you go in expecting something twisty and propulsive.

I kept waiting for the various pieces to snap together in a way that would make the tension suddenly feel urgent. Instead, the story stayed a slow psychological descent, with plenty of unease but less actual suspense than I expected.

By the time everything came together, I realized I had spent much of the book waiting for a gear shift that never really happened.

So, Would I Recommend The Plunge?

Yes, with some caveats.

The Plunge is beautifully written, emotionally messy, and packed with the kind of glamorous bad decisions that are much more enjoyable to read about than experience firsthand.

Raicek gives Liv room to be selfish, grieving, obsessive, reckless, and complicated without turning her into either a cautionary tale or a perfectly polished heroine. I liked that a lot.

I just wish the plot had matched the strength of the writing and atmosphere.

If you go in expecting a dark, psychological novel about grief, desire, obsession, and the limits of reinvention, there’s plenty here to enjoy. If you’re expecting a fast-moving thriller full of twists, you may spend a lot of time waiting for the plunge to feel a little steeper.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for an advanced reader’s copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.