Quit your job. Escape to the Caribbean. Build a dream life in paradise. If paradise will let you.

Wally Breight’s a miserable-in-his-job P.R. executive who dreams of escaping to happily-ever-after in the Caribbean. When he stumbles across a run-down scuba diving operation for sale on Blacktip Island, he snaps it up and settles into paradise. But paradise has other ideas. His dive boat’s a lemon. His business partner proves the age of piracy isn’t dead. Scuba guests are scarce. And a free-spirited dive mistress might party him into an early grave.

If Wally can’t get a handle on paradise, pronto, he’ll be leaving Blacktip Island faster than a coconut in a hurricane.

Have you ever had a lovely holiday and been tempted by the idea of giving up the day job to move to that location permanently? Perhaps set up a small business, especially if that could include your favourite hobby. Most of us get home, consider the implications and put off any changes. Others take the plunge with varying success. One person who has made such a move is former photo journalist, Tim W. Jackson who is now living the dream in the Caribbean, teaching scuba diving alongside his writing.

On Wahoo Reef is the third in his Blacktip Island series, following Blacktip Island, published in 2016 and Rosalita Flats in 2020. Similar to Jackson, our protagonist, Wally Breight, has given up a regular career and home in the USA to buy a business selling diving equipment and providing diving excursions to the beautiful coral reefs around the island. Wally soon discovers that life is going to be tougher than expected.

Jackson writes in a simple to read style with plots that are easy to follow. Wally is a likeable and well-meaning chap but he is also infuriatingly gullible. The book stands alone although there are brief mentions of people and places from the earlier books. There is plenty of humour as he endeavours to build his business and integrate into the local social scene. I found some of the events a little silly but acceptable. I’m also embarrassed to admit that I chuckled at some of the character names, including two members of the Bottoms family; Peachy and Smackie.

As with the previous books the island’s scenery, especially underwater, is the real star of the show. Jackson describes the diving sequences well, bringing out his passion for his hobby.

Fortunately for Wally there are some on the island who are looking out for him and just when all seems lost he is rescued in a denouement that left me with a warm glow.

On Wahoo Reef is to be recommended. I have awarded four and a half stars.

Tim W. Jackson started kindergarten in Indonesia, graduated high school in Egypt and was educated everywhere in between. His first taste of scuba diving came at the age of six when he sneaked breaths off his dad’s double-hose regulator in the deep end of the pool. Later, as an ex-journalist armed with a newly-minted master’s degree in English, he discovered he was qualified to be a bartender, a waiter or a PhD student. Instead he chose Secret Option D: run off to the Cayman Islands to work as a scuba instructor and boat captain by day and write fiction at night. Two decades later, he still wishes that was half as interesting as it sounds. Or even a quarter . . .

Jackson is the award-winning author of the comic Caribbean novels Blacktip Island and The Secret of Rosalita Flats, as well as The Blacktip Times humor blog. His “Tales from Blacktip Island” short stories have been published in literary journals worldwide. He is currently concocting his next Blacktip Island novel and still enjoys scuba diving with his dad’s old double-hose reg.