What the Tide Brings In by Sierra Benayon-Abraham
Reviewed by Ezra Anderson
What does a perfect girl risk when she starts asking questions?
The question sits at the centre of Sierra Benayon-Abraham’s What the Tide Brings In, a debut YA thriller that opens with a striking image: seventeen-year-old Maven Ryder wakes up on a Malibu beach surrounded by police tape, sirens, and flashing lights. She has no memory of last night. Her best friend, Holice, is panicking. TV crews and reporter start to surround the cordoned area. One brutal fact surfaces through the confusion: Finn, the boy who made Maven feel seen beyond her role as the “flawless girl,” was murdered.
“What the Tide Brings In captures the fluid social dynamics among adolescents.”
With this captivating opening scene, Benayon-Abraham tethers the novel’s central mystery to Maven’s inner life: her lack of memory is inextricably bound with whatever happened to Finn. Why can’t she recall the night before? Our curiosity is piqued when we learn that Maven is a high-achieving student, loyal friend, and dutiful daughter — the kind of person who always seems effortlessly composed. The book’s dedication, to “every other girl out there who has ever felt the need to be perfect,” is the emotional key to the novel.
Before Finn’s death, Malibu offers Maven a glimpse of another lifestyle. On a long-awaited grad trip with Holice and her cousin Kiley, she dares to step outside the model-student persona that has kept her both safe and trapped. Finn offers her something she yearns for even more than her first romance: the possibility of a self she doesn’t have to perform. His death sends her searching for his killer, and, in time, for a truer version of herself.
As Maven struggles to reconstruct the missing pieces of the night before, grief gives way to suspicion. She steadily transforms from a perfect girl to a truth-teller, asking the questions no one else wants answered: What really happened to Finn? And what does justice mean when the official story leaves too much unexplained?
Benayon-Abraham highlights the gap between closure and truth. As the case moves toward trial, Maven realizes that the justice system can punish Greg Darie — the powerful man at the centre of the novel’s web of abuse, coercion, bribery, and violence — without fully explaining Finn’s death. The adults want closure. Maven wants the truth. The distinction introduces a generational conflict: young people are left to point out what institutions overlook, and to trust their instincts when official systems move too slowly or see too little.
What the Tide Brings In captures the fluid social dynamics among adolescents. Maven’s relationships with Kiley, Holice, and Finn are tested throughout the book. The title’s grand tidal metaphor is well earned: memories, secrets, and submerged parts of Maven herself all rise to the surface. Benayon-Abraham deftly blends the propulsive momentum of a whodunit with the narrative arc of a coming-of-age story, making Maven’s search for Finn’s killer inseparable from her struggle to stop playing the part of a flawless girl.
Romantic, suspenseful, and increasingly dark, What the Tide Brings In is a fast-paced YA mystery with a serious emotional undertow. Benayon-Abraham reveals that becoming yourself is an act of courage, and the people around you may not forgive you for it.
About the Author
SIERRA BENAYON-ABRAHAM is a Toronto-born writer currently completing her undergraduate degree at UCLA. A recipient of several state and national collegiate-level journalism awards, she brings a reporter’s curiosity and a mystery lover’s instincts to her fiction. What the Tide Brings In is her debut novel.
About the Reviewer
EZRA ANDERSON is a writer and bookseller based in Toronto.
Book Details
Publisher: RE:Books
Publication Date: May 12, 2026
Format: Paperback
Pages: 450
ISBN: 9781998206469
Price: $23.99 CAD / $21.99 USD
Looks suspenseful! I'd like to read more YA fiction.