I grabbed Beyond the Sea last month for a dollar during a bookbub sale. I realize that there’s been some drama over the blurb lines, “Two straight guys. One desert island.”  Many people seem to see it as bi-erasure, and I understand why that would be a point of contention. Bi erasure is a big problem. Maybe I’m just too asexual to understand the point of view as it relates to this book, but as I read it, the characters both believed they were straight and fell in love with another man. I also didn’t even pay attention to the blurb before reading the book, so I didn’t have a chance to get offended and put it down before reading it.

The main characters are both believable and sympathetic at the beginning, and grow as people throughout the novel, which I’ve always found important in any genre. The story is well done. It covers the tropes you’d expect to find in such a novel, and some you wouldn’t. Some research obviously went into how airplanes work, and I didn’t have a moment of doubt as to the validity of the information. (I don’t know if it’s all right, but it’s well presented enough that I believed and didn’t feel a need to look it up.) Some of the most basic things that often get overlooked in stories like this were addressed – like Troy’s depression when he first starts to believe that they won’t be rescued, and the give and take between an introvert and an extrovert in such a stressful situation.