Author Interview: An Ocean Apart by Jill Tew

In An Ocean Apart, Jill Tew delivers a fierce and immersive eco-thriller that feels both cinematic and heartbreakingly real. The world has fractured into the flooded Marshes below and the glittering cruise-ship cities above, where the privileged sail away from the wreckage they helped create. For Eden, a Marsh girl fueled by loss and righteous fury, infiltrating that world is supposed to be revenge, until the lines between enemy and ally start to blur.

We spoke with Jill about writing a heroine who refuses to be contained by her anger, crafting a love story against the backdrop of environmental collapse, and asking what it truly means to stay human when survival is a luxury. Check it out below and pick up An Ocean Apart, out now!

An Ocean Apart (Joy Revolution)

by Jill Tew
on October 14, 2025
Bookshop
Goodreads

An electrifying dystopian novel packed with a tantalizing love triangle, gripping political intrigue, and a Bachelor-style competition from the critically acclaimed author of The Dividing Sky, Jill Tew.
Eden Lowell has plenty to be frustrated about. In the flooded Marshes of former Miami, each day is about survival. Even her feelings for her best friend Henry are more complicated than they should be. Luckily, Eden knows exactly who to blame: the Cruisers, corporate elite who sail the world on massive ships instead of facing the environmental crimes they’ve committed on land.
When Eden learns that a Cruiser family is hosting a dating competition for their heir, Theo Desjardins, she seizes an opportunity. Aided by a political agitator known as the Ringmaster, she’ll infiltrate the competition, break Theo’s heart, and then steal his money for the Marshes. A perfect plan…
Until she gets to know Theo, who’s not only handsome but surprisingly kind…
As Eden drifts deeper down into the Cruisers’ world, the line separating truth and lies becomes murky. Torn between two identities, two loves, and two futures, will she choose the mission, or her heart?

Interview with Jill Tew

Eden walks into this mission with so much righteous anger; she’s a girl on a revenge quest. What was the hardest part about writing her when she starts to fall for the world she set out to destroy?

As a diehard plotter, I like my characters to follow a clear arc, as they learn whatever lesson drives the heart of the story. But with Eden, I knew the most realistic progression wasn’t going to be linear. She’s going to hold on to her anger, then slowly release it, then grip it for dear life when she’s terrified that she’s becoming someone unrecognizable. She’s going to double down on the mission as a way to prove to herself that she’s not betraying her people, even as she feels herself falling harder and harder for Theo. It was hard as an author to sit on that see-saw, to see the happy ending within reach and then yank it away from Eden, in the name of adding nuance and realism to her character.

The flooded Marshes and the glittering Cruiser ships feel like two sides of a broken promise. How did you want the setting itself to shape the love triangle and Eden’s loyalty tug-of-war?

There’s a powerful metaphor in the idea of ships and the shore. Cruise ships leave from Miami every day, and if you don’t have a ticket, your only option is to stand on the shore and watch them sail away. I wanted the luxury of the Cruisers’ lifestyle to be visible to Eden; she sees it in the promo vids, knows that there are people in the world living without scarcity. But she wasn’t born with a ticket, so to speak, so she’s on the outside looking in. 

At the same time, it was important to me that even when Eden does make it onto the ship, the luxury only entices her so far. In the Cruisers’ style of dress, she sees that the elite can only approximate the beauty of nature. All the money in the world can’t buy them the true untamed beauty of the Marshes, no matter how much they covet it. Eden appreciates that in some ways, she has the true wealth in that sense. Her love of hunting the buzzballs with Henry was a way to show how at home she is in that natural, simple beauty.

This has that delicious Bachelor-style spectacle, but underneath it there’s real political fire. What do you hope readers will question about power, privilege, and who gets to stay safe when the world falls apart?

Unfortunately, it’s a tale as old as time that the wealthy will use their money and power to isolate themselves when the going gets hard. But with environmental concerns especially, we’re now beginning to see how false that premise is. We’ve only got one planet, and we’re all stuck here. While some groups may feel the impact of climate change more acutely than others, there’s no outrunning it, for anyone. The sooner we realize that we’re all facing these consequences together, the better our chances of finding solutions.