27/07/2026
The Stranger in the Lifeboat follows Benji and a group of luxury yacht passengers who were all shipwrecked, & stranded at sea - adrift on a lifeboat. I mustn’t spoil this for you, but the book blends survival fiction with mystery and spiritual allegory. It explores themes of faith, tenacity, hope, redemption, forgiveness, and grief.
Specifically on grief, a line that spoke to me was when Benji had asked, “why does God take people away?” The stranger responds, “why did God put them there in the first place?”
During the pain of loss, the focus is on perceiving the loss of what we once had; implying perhaps that life experiences & encounters were a form of possession.
The stranger in the book challenges our unintentional sense of entitlement, not to deny the reality of loss, but to invite gratitude to sit alongside that same pain.
So perhaps a relationship is not made meaningless by its end, but by how it has shaped us while it lasted.