"Canggu runs on scooters, sambal, and a black-tiled pool that closes like a lid"
Nia Okonkwo used to be the fastest swimmer in the pool. Now she cannot put her face in the water. A work exchange at Lagoon Luxe, Bali's most photogenic party hostel, is supposed to help her start again. The job comes with a lifeguard chair, a black-tiled pool and a smart safety cover that has started ignoring its key. While the Head of Vibes sells tickets to LAST CALL, Nia counts heads. Her new friends count followers, software faults and the hours until Nyepi, when the whole island will fall silent. Then a familiar account appears in the hostel reviews. It seems to know when the pool will close. With the party growing and the warnings getting harder to explain away, Nia must decide how much safety a complimentary system can really promise. At Lagoon Luxe, somebody is always watching.
Age: 23
Type: Peckham lifeguard and ex-butterflyer
Fatal Flaw: Times everything, including how long she can stand at the edge
Role: Protagonist
Age: 19
Type: Pool and maintenance, surf coach, demon sculptor
Fatal Flaw: Stands two metres back from the edge and calls it modern
Role: Ally
Age: —
Type: Content creator in his healing era
Fatal Flaw: Still films first, then apologises
Role: Buddy
Age: 30s
Type: Hostel manager with a grapefruit of keys
Fatal Flaw: Nothing is funny to her before lunch
Role: Keeper of the keys
From the locked editorial review v1.1 prologue; author approval of this pass pending.
At 1:52 a.m., five nights before the island went silent, I Komang Adi Putra was fishing a flower out of a swimming pool with a net on a stick and thinking about demons.
Specifically, he was thinking about the demon's head. The head was the problem. His banjar's ogoh-ogoh for the Nyepi Eve parade was nearly finished: four metres tall, bamboo skeleton, papier-mâché skin, a body built out of chicken wire and old newspapers and eleven hundred Pocari Sweat bottles the kids had collected off Batu Bolong beach. Its arms were done. Its fangs were done. Its huge white belly was done, painted and glossy and slightly obscene. But the head had to glow, and the LED strip Komang had bought in Denpasar kept flickering in a way that made the demon look less like the embodiment of all the chaos in the universe and more like a fridge that needed servicing.
Solder, he thought. Solder the connection again. Or buy a better strip. Or tell the kids it's supposed to flicker, because chaos flickers.
The net came up with a frangipani blossom in it, white and yellow and perfect, and a bottle cap, and a single hair tie.
Komang shook them into the bucket and moved on down the edge of the pool.
Fictional reviews of the fictional Lagoon Luxe Party Hostel, quoted from the book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Loved it!!! Pool is unreal and the new smart cover is SO cool, it closes at 11:30 like magic 🪄 Staff are angels. Komang taught me to surf!! Gede's tacos 🌮🌮🌮 Would 100% come back 💕" — Liv_Travels_NZ
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Float Night was a VIBE Pool Host is a legend, literally saved a guy!! 10/10 would float again." — Bella_Byron_Bay
☠ "the cover is very quick. variable noted. thank you for wandering. risk accepted. ☠" — @HostelReaper