The Island

By: Adrian McKinty

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for the ARC of this book!

Tom is a widowed doctor with two young teenage children, Owen and Oliva. He has remarried a young woman named Heather, whom the children do not particularly care for. When Tom has a conference to attend in Melbourne, Australia, he takes the whole family. Once they are there, the kids are bored. They want to see kangaroos and koalas! They were told they could see them on a remote island, Dutch Island. However, that island isn’t for tourists. It’s off limits and the family that lives there doesn’t like outsiders. But Tom is able to convince some members of the family to take them over to the island just for a little and then bring them back. Then there’s an accident on the island, and someone has to pay. The local family doesn’t want anyone off the island alive and after being separated from Tom, it’s up to Heather to keep herself and the kids alive. Will they make it off the island?

This book for me is 3.5 stars – so I’ve rounded up to 4 on the review sites. There were aspects of the book that I really liked and then there were aspects of the book that I didn’t like. I really liked that there was a lot of action – it never got boring or mundane. I like that the author painted the scenes so vividly that I could picture everything, but did so without there being so much description that it was boring. There were definitely parts of the book that kept me on the edge of my seat.

That being said, I felt like the book was SO farfetched and unbelievable. There weren’t any super shocking twists. The author wrote the characters so well, that you knew what they were going to do before they even did it. Which on one hand, I like that I really felt like I knew the characters. But on the other, if I can guess what they are going to do, it takes the fun out of reading a thriller.

Overall, a decent read. You can pre-order your copy of this book here.