Reviews with content warning for Gore - The Island

This book is SO good I could not put it down. I had a tough time deciding between it being character or plot-driven because the plot of this book is so straightforward, driving, and easy to feel and understand but ultimately the characters' growth describes their choices and makes me feel tense. We begin with a seemingly normal and very realistic family that ends up in a very 0-100 tense situation and the terror is real. The way that Tom's true character comes to fruition lines up with how Heather would experience finding out who he truly is. The book's resolution is extremely satisfying and every character arc feels real. I love the potential super-naturalness that occurs from the islander's perspective, viewing Heather as a sort of Karma for their past sins. Excellent book; would read again.

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jkar7's review

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adventurous tense fast-paced

4.75

This book was fantastic. I had no idea what it was about going in, and was quickly intrigued. I found it to be pretty fast paced. I grew to like the characters. The only things keeping me from rating this 5 stars is that I often found myself thinking "how would they know that?" or "Yeah right". If the characters' backgrounds were built out a bit more, I might feel differently but overall I appreciated that it ramped up quickly.

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dev921's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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lyndis8377's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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azulmuller's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

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amandas_bookshelf's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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archaicrobin's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

I didn’t hate this book but I did not enjoy it for a single second. I love thrillers, I’ll read twisty, literary, domestic, even the crazy out there ones that require suspending disbelief, but honestly The Island just isn’t worth it.

Heather is 24, a massage therapist, and suddenly a mom of two teenagers after marrying a man much older and more successful than her. The family travels to Australia for dad, Tom, to be a keynote speaker for some medical convention, and they decide to double the trip as a family vacation.

The kids are terrible and want to see koalas so they agree to follow some backwoods yokels to their “island” to see some koalas, but unsurprisingly this is a poor decisions and soon Heather is responsible for keeping the family alive as they’re hunted by said yokels.

This novel was boring and the characters were not only unlikeable but poorly crafted. They all make stupid decisions, the growth that occurs makes no sense and characters seem to change viewpoints at the flip of a coin. The twist was stupid and honestly didn’t make any sense, and the whole book was just jump scares and shock value. A couple gets eaten by ants? The main female character is threatened with rape and trivialized, the kids all have mental health issues that magically disappear after their experience, it’s all just poor writing and honestly, no man has the right to write about rape and threats of rape so trivially. Whenever rape is used for shock value I am 100% out.

If you’re looking for a good thriller, don’t bother with this one. There are way too many great thrillers out there that are actually worth spending your time on. If you want a good survival horror with a strong female lead, read Getaway by Zoje Stage and pass on this one. The fact The Island is getting a Hulu adaptation while good thrillers by female authors like Getaway, are being ignored is beyond infuriating.

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