CANTIK NI

In the final installment of Mann’s Living Heavy, Traveling Light series, tech professionals start a new project on a remote island, only to discover that their past has followed them ashore.

Having left their corporate-espionage lives behind, Lewis Delfour and Suzanna Oxenburg set out to revive the Indonesian eco-destination Cantik Ni (translated as “This is beautiful” in Malaysian) on Séparée Island, where the two widowed women who inherited the resort franchise want nothing to do with it anymore. It seems like a new, safer chapter for the pair of jet-setters, but the island possesses its own unique undercurrent of isolation and threat. Lewis seems to find comfort in this new challenge, but cracks start forming: Rough Russian mobsters enter the scene, and their brutality quickly escalates, including the strangling of a pit boss’ wife, among other crimes (there are references to “Russian torture”), as they interfere with Lewis and Suzanna’s development of the resort. Mann compellingly frames lovers Lewis and Suzanna as complementary twin flames; Lewis embodies independence, calculation, and survival instincts, while Suzanna’s compassion and patience temper and complicate their dynamic. While the external threat effectively rises through action, the writing undercuts its impact with exposition-heavy passages, weak descriptors, and peculiar sentence structures: “She smiled at Lewis and said, with misgivings because it was too personal and felt like gloating, that she would feel the same way if Lewis were not the best of husbands, resolutely pushing away memories of her ex, Richard, who had often returned from travel in a bad mood and finding fault.” The surfeit of adverbs (steadily, silently) and awkward syntax (“stood with relief”) both become frustrating. Though the novel engagingly sets up international power plays and introduces high stakes, the structural issues hinder the thriller’s tension.

An alluring love story driven by danger but hampered by bumpy prose.