Review - Nearshore by Steve Hawk #netgalley #stevehawk #nearshore

A gripping coastal debut of humanity, power, and looming catastrophe

MY REVIEW

Do surfing and nuclear bombs go hand in hand? They do in Nearshore by Steve Hawk. It reeks of possibilities. Our current reality makes Steve Hawk’s novel read as truth. How isolated are we as a country and as individuals? Words versus actions? It seems to me like many things are possible that we, as a people, would never thought a reality. How much of terrorism is home grown?

It seems to be more plot than character driven, but I found myself rooting for the good guys. In books like Nearshore, there are a lot of details that can, at times, cause this action story to bog down.

All in all, the story kept me involved and I would consider reading more of Steve Hawk’s work.

My thanks go out to NetGalley and Viking Penguin for the opportunity to share my review for Nearshore by Steve Hawk.

GOODREADS BLURB

“Nearshore is the best novel of homegrown nuclear terrorism yet written, chillingly credible, terrifying, and all too plausible.”
— Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb

“An exceptionally thoughtful literary thriller. In the depth and breadth of its story, in the lyricism of its prose, Nearshore will surely establish Steve Hawk as a writer to be reckoned with.”
— Kem Nunn, author of Tapping the Source, Dogs of Winter, and Tijuana Straits

“Engrossing, graceful, and transporting, this is a terrific—if terrifying—tale of near apocalypse.”
— Publisher’s Weekly

Daybreak, West Virginia: A “small” nuclear bomb detonates beside an Appalachia highway. The weapon’s explosive yield is meager, the death count blessedly low. And yet—it is history’s first act of nuclear terrorism, and it threatens to tilt the world beyond reckoning.

Months later, surfer and lifeguard Jamie Palmer is patrolling his domain, a treacherous stretch of wild California coast, when he responds to a mysterious nearshore boating accident that has jettisoned two people overboard. The victims turn out to be Palmer’s best friend—a brilliant, renegade Stanford University professor—and the man’s teenage son, Luca. The professor drowns, Luca survives—leaving Palmer the boy’s guardian.

Soon after, Chelsea Wu, a math prodigy and doctoral student, confides to Palmer that she and the professor unearthed a link between a Silicon Valley megacorporation, its sociopathic billionaire founder, and the nuke in West Virginia. When a second device is detonated, this unlikely team—the surfer, the orphan, and the math whiz—must persuade investigators that the bombmakers are not only homegrown, but also hiding in plain sight.

An immersive and disturbingly plausible debut, Nearshore delivers a mix of literary suspense and coastal noir. Moving with the speed of a barreling wave, Nearshore also explores deeper clashes: isolation versus community and family, Silicon Valley versus humanity, words versus action, land versus sea.

Genre: Contemporary, Fiction, Literary, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
352 pages, Hardcover
Published August 18, 2026 by Viking

ABOUT STEVE HAWK

Steve Hawk began his writing career as a newspaper reporter. He would go on to spent eight years as editor of Surfer magazine, six years as executive editor of Sierra (the magazine of the Sierra Club), and five years as editor of Stanford Business magazine.

He also worked as a writer and consultant on the fictional HBO series John From Cincinnati. He is the author of Waves, a coffee-table book about the aesthetics and physics of ocean waves, and recently ghost-wrote a book (due out in the summer of 2027) for his brother, Tony, that celebrates the history and culture of skateboarding.

He has been surfing for nearly 60 years, and is one of a one of a handful of people to have ridden waves on all seven continents. He lives with his family near Half Moon Bay, California, where he spends as much time as possible frolicking in the ocean. Nearshore is his first novel.

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