Reviews

12 separate but interconnected stories taking place over various locations and time periods.
A mysterious island.
Human or animal?
Piles of bones.
A Norwegian explorer's teeth.

I've never read anything like it. There's no closure, no real answers to any of the questions that form in the reader's mind. The author leaves a lot open for the imagination.
But it works.

artemispenny's review

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dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

finedanddandy's review

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dark slow-paced

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

3.0

Thank you to Netgalley and Gallery Books for the arc in exchange for an honest review. Island Rule by Katie M Flynn is a book of surreal, interconnected literary short stories.

I liked the idea of the stories being interconnected, however, sometimes the connection was difficult to pinpoint until nearly the end of a story, which led to me having to reread certain stories. I also wish the stories had a more distinct sense of time/place, the ambiguity didn’t really work for me with the vaguely sci-fi elements within the stories.

I did enjoy what complex characters were developed in such a short period, though I’d love to read something full length from Flynn. My favorite stories were Disaster Kids, The Single Friend, and Island Rule.

thatweirdbookgirlie's review

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fast-paced

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

3.0

I just was not overly enthused by any of the stories in this book. It was hard to really care about this world that Flynn was building, as the short stories are interconnected. Yet often this connection was hard to grasp. It was also just generally frustrating that I often had no idea when or where the stories were taking place. Nothing was overtly "bad," to me it is just forgettable.

Thank you to Gallery/Scout Press for handing out these galley copies at NYCC 2023.

frogqueen's review

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mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

twelve interconnected short stories centered around a world that is like ours with some gently surrealist twists
some are set in the past, some in the present day, and some in the not-too-distant future
general themes throughout of motherhood/expectations of women and clinging to normalcy in the face of climate change/new black mirror-esque technology
i really liked these! they were just the right amount of surreal, they were focused, they were thought-provoking
it was fun to see characters pop up in different stories
there wasn't really any standout worst story as there often can be in collections like this but i think "The Single Friend" was maybe not as cohesive with the rest
i think if there's any fault it's that i was hoping for a tighter connection between the stories to flesh out the world a bit more, there were a few times where i reached the end of a story only to think "oh, that was it?"
i was also hoping for a final concluding story that wrapped everything up and while we didn't quite get that, i think the last story was the perfect bow on the book as a whole.

**review of an arc i received via goodreads giveaways**

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