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A review by sarabook
The Island by M.A. Bennett
2.0
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The Island follows Link, a newcomer to a prestigious American school, as he’s thrown into a world of traditions, bullies and rankings. Forced on a summer school trip with the worst of his tormentors, his life is thrown into turmoil as rivalries and alliances come to a head on a deserted island, where only the fittest and smartest survive.
I was drawn to this as it looked like a good summer novel, and overall I found it was easy to read, written well, and kept me interested enough to want to know how it ended. It’s like a YA version of Survivor and Lord of the Flies which made for an interesting world that’s a little bit different from the average contemporary YA. However, aside from the descriptive settings I found this isn’t really developed well. It’s character driven - which I found to be at the detriment of the plot and pace as it spends too much time setting up backstories rather than telling the actual story.
I also found the plot ‘twists’ rather obvious, and I worked them out quite early on - meaning nothing came as a surprise or shocked me during the course of the story. If there had been some kind of mystery or set up that I wasn’t expecting I think this would have propelled my enjoyment of this a bit more. I felt I was constantly anticipating a twist that I knew was coming rather than having the carpet swept out from under me - which is what I wanted.
I also found all of the main characters deeply unlikeable with no redeeming features. Link in particular is misogynistic with little emotional depth. Despite being bullied himself, he shows little sympathy for others and seems to take an almost pride in being horrible to his peers. There’s no emotional connection, and with this lack of sympathy, this made me not care about what happened to any of the characters.
The biggest let down for me was the far fetched epilogue that didn’t fit with the rest of the novel. It completely changed the outlook and tone of the whole novel, and ruined whatever redeeming features I might have felt towards it. I found it essentially unnecessary and unrealistic in terms of character development.
This had the promise of an easy summer read with a hint of mystery, but fell a little flat in character development and pace.
The Island follows Link, a newcomer to a prestigious American school, as he’s thrown into a world of traditions, bullies and rankings. Forced on a summer school trip with the worst of his tormentors, his life is thrown into turmoil as rivalries and alliances come to a head on a deserted island, where only the fittest and smartest survive.
I was drawn to this as it looked like a good summer novel, and overall I found it was easy to read, written well, and kept me interested enough to want to know how it ended. It’s like a YA version of Survivor and Lord of the Flies which made for an interesting world that’s a little bit different from the average contemporary YA. However, aside from the descriptive settings I found this isn’t really developed well. It’s character driven - which I found to be at the detriment of the plot and pace as it spends too much time setting up backstories rather than telling the actual story.
I also found the plot ‘twists’ rather obvious, and I worked them out quite early on - meaning nothing came as a surprise or shocked me during the course of the story. If there had been some kind of mystery or set up that I wasn’t expecting I think this would have propelled my enjoyment of this a bit more. I felt I was constantly anticipating a twist that I knew was coming rather than having the carpet swept out from under me - which is what I wanted.
I also found all of the main characters deeply unlikeable with no redeeming features. Link in particular is misogynistic with little emotional depth. Despite being bullied himself, he shows little sympathy for others and seems to take an almost pride in being horrible to his peers. There’s no emotional connection, and with this lack of sympathy, this made me not care about what happened to any of the characters.
The biggest let down for me was the far fetched epilogue that didn’t fit with the rest of the novel. It completely changed the outlook and tone of the whole novel, and ruined whatever redeeming features I might have felt towards it. I found it essentially unnecessary and unrealistic in terms of character development.
This had the promise of an easy summer read with a hint of mystery, but fell a little flat in character development and pace.