Safari Murder Party by Rachel Moore 
Published by Berkley on May 19, 2026
Genres: Contemporary
Pages: 352
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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In this darkly funny, slightly unhinged, heart-pounding thriller, two office rivals must team up to escape wild animals and even wilder coworkers on a corporate retreat gone wrong.
Fletcher Spence is dying for a promotion. And her colleagues are more than happy to oblige.
After three years working seventy-hour weeks as assistant to the most terrifying CEO in the magazine world, Fletcher finally finagled a spot on Cartwright Media’s annual corporate retreat—a famously luxurious week on the Cartwrights’ private island, where promotions are handed out like party favors. And her plan to snag her dream job as a travel magazine photographer was going great...until her boss’s dramatic death reveals his last will and testament: Whoever survives the week will inherit the company.
So now she’s stuck on her billionaire boss’s safari park island, surrounded by wild animals and on the run from coworkers who’ve swapped coffee cups for machetes and briefcases for hunting rifles.
To Fletcher’s dismay, her only ally might be her boss’s insufferably gorgeous son, Waylon Cartwright. Despite their hostile history, Fletcher is at least 80 percent sure he won’t try to kill her this week. Plus, his experience on the island might come in handy while they fend off lions and tigers and...marketing executives? Oh my.
While Fletcher battles her own ambitions and her unexpected attraction to Waylon, her power-hungry, bloodthirsty colleagues will do anything to stop them from escaping with their lives. Everyone knows the media industry is cutthroat, but in this safari party, it’s never been more true.
A funny and slightly murderous vacation.
Fletcher Spence was one of the best personal assistants that the world-famous Jet-Setter Magazine has ever had–at least that is what her boss has told her. Unfortunately, what Fletcher has always dreamed of was being a photographer for Jet-Setter, not scheduling lunches and refilling the copier. She wants to travel the world and take beautiful, magazine-worthy photographs.
Every year, her boss rewards his top people with a trip to his private island for a week of sun and schmoozing–with most returning with a new position in the company. This year, Fletcher made sure to put her own name on the list but she was shocked and disappointed, not only to find her name taken off but to see the Waylon Cartwright, her boss’s disinherited son, listed instead. The one human being in New York that Fletcher is convinced is her actual, real-life nemesis.
Fletcher has not had the best year. She broke up with her long-time, long-distance boyfriend and she is being evicted from her affordable (i.e. cheap) apartment. She not only dreams of being on the photography staff, she needs that promotion in order to stay in New York City. If she’s the best assistant ever, than she needs to be on that island to assist her boss. So in desperation, Fletcher shows up at the private airport, and just when she believes her boss is about to send her on her away, he agrees to allow her to join them.
This would be the best opportunity that Fletcher has ever had to succeed in her career, except this year her boss has something special planned. It is time for new management at Jet-Setter and he has set up a Hunger Games scenario where the winner–or survivor–takes all and becomes the new owner of Jet-Setter. With a billion dollar business on the line, what’s a little murder between colleagues.
This story was very creative in its presentation of what happens when your office devolves in a Lord of the Flies way. The sales team sticks together while the CFO goes off the rails. Fletcher is always one to be ten steps ahead of what her boss needs, so they all want her on their team so they can pick her brains–off the wall if necessary. You don’t want the others to get ahead, do you? Office resentments come to the forefront and pay cuts come by way of a machete. Some deaths come swiftly and some quite creatively but it is shocking how quickly your co-workers just might turn on you.
The only negative here was that Waylon is kind of one-dimensional, the misunderstood rich kid. Fletcher and Waylon have been non-friends for the three years since the met after one three-minute interlude. It was a very Pride and Prejudice meeting where Fletcher felt offended and Waylon felt slighted and it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
While the story was fun, the romance lacked. It was still worth the read.
Favorite Scene:
“So, that leaves eight. Give or take a pride of lions, a well-fed bush baby, and whatever other Jumanji horrors the island wants to throw at us.”
Buried in the brush, something growled.
“Like,” she added with a gulp, “whatever that was.”
“Do you see anything?” he asked.
Trees dotted the grassland, giraffes grazing at a few of them. Squawking birds flitted from branch to branch, migrating closer to the jungle’s shelter as the clouds crept in. Other than that, the savanna had quieted.
“There!” She pointed.
Something a few yards out zigged through the grasses, then zagged, then zigged again–she just couldn’t see what. Whatever it was hulked toward them, crouched low. The noise ramped up, stuck between a rattle and a deep-bellied roar. Louder this time. Closer.
“Get me down. Get me down. Getmedown.” She smacked Waylon’s hands. “Now. Now.“
“What was it?” he asked as he lowered her.
No sooner than her feet hit the dirt did Fletcher power forward. Stalks razed down her arms, her legs, leaving her skin red and raw. “It sounds like a lion had a baby with a super venomous snake.”
Waylon stayed close on her heels, a hand on the small of her back propelling her forward. “That’s biologically improbable.”
Fletcher sighed. “Okay, Steve Irwin. What do you think it is?”
The grass growled again, and he pressed closer to her. “Maybe a lion or a snake, but not both.”
She had her mouth open to argue that after everything they’d witnessed this week, a lion-snake hybrid hardly seemed outrageous. There was a whole rebuttal on the tip of her tongue about how his dad could have very well hired private zoological geneticists to create the first mammal-reptilian crossover species. A useless vanity project for the sake of playing god. The Tesla Cybertruck of predators. A slion.
But then, Waylon gripped her shoulder, jerking her to a halt. He roped her against his chest, arms looped around her shoulders.
“Using me as a human shield is a new low, Cartwright,” Fletcher whispered.
He exhaled. Almost a laugh. His breath brushed against her ear, still minty from their riverside freshening up this morning. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
A hiss raised goose bumps up Fletcher’s skin. She didn’t imagine the way Waylon’s fingers flexed, the way he shifted her into him, the way their hearts pounded in sync. There was nowhere else to run. When the grass parted, they’d meet the slion’s fanged maw, and it would sink its teeth into–
An ostrich barked at them.
A beaky thing the size of a lesser dinosaur with black beads for eyes broke through the brush. It made that sound–the slion sound. She’d hardly call herself an ostrich connoisseur, but she knew the universal noise for pissed off. The ostrich poked its head over the grass, peeked behind it, and then ducked back down.
When it charged, Fletcher gasped. It wasn’t running toward them. It was running away from something else.
The something in question shouted, “Come back, birdbrain. I’m trying to ride you!”
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