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A review by fictionmajorette
Whisper Island by Carissa Ann Lynch
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-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? Yes
3.0
Full thoughts: https://fictionmajorette.blogspot.com/2021/10/whisper-island-carissa-ann-lynch.html
The real star of this book for me was the isolation sub-genre and how well Lynch implemented it. I love a good isolation thriller because of the instant tension, suspicion, and questions it poses. Whisper Island is the last island in a archipelago, about 10 miles off the coast of Alaska. Lynch does a great job at showing us the characters problem solving, only to be thwarted by the killer.
The characters, I'll admit, took me a while to warm up to. I didn't feel like these people were close enough to vacation on an island together for 3 months. The story does give us a bit of background and shows us how the 4 friends all came to meet in college, but it wasn't enough of a set up for me to believe the initial premise of the book. As we got to see the group work together to survive their situation, I then got to see more of how the friendship group dynamic worked and I became more invested in the characters.
I really loved the POV choices in this book. Initially, we only get the POV of the original 4 friends, but once we're on the island we get Sam's brother and his girlfriend's POVs as well. All of the characters have their own secrets that may or may not be connected to the events happening on the island. It was a little frustrating in the beginning to have a lot of the chapters have some veiled reference to that secret where a character would say something like "good thing we're having this vacation, I needed to get away from home for my own safety". This, obviously, helped the mysterious aspect of the book because we didn't know which character's secret was the key to figuring out the truth but it was a little too heavy-handed for my personal liking.
I needed more drama from these early-20-somethings! I will admit the reveal of who the killer is really got me good. However, the way the ending played out was extremely unsatisfying for me. After some reflection time, I think my main issue with the ending stems from the fact that we didn't get a really good view of this group before the events on the island so, as I said above, I couldn't get a good view of how the characters changed. I didn't have any plot-level issues with the ending and, in a lot of ways, I think it made a lot of sense. I think the ending would have been much more impactful from a character-level perspective if we had gotten to know the characters better and got to see just how much impact the events on the island had on their lives going forward.
Overall, this was a fun read, but there were a number of issues I had that, overall, impacted my enjoyment of the book. I think the isolation elements and POV choices were excellent. However, the character development and group dynamic was really lacking for me and I think if that was dialed in a little better, this could have been a really fantastic read.
Thanks to NetGalley and One More Chapter for the ARC in exchange for review
The Kindle edition was published February 2, 2021 but paperback edition has an expected publication date of November 16, 2021.
The real star of this book for me was the isolation sub-genre and how well Lynch implemented it. I love a good isolation thriller because of the instant tension, suspicion, and questions it poses. Whisper Island is the last island in a archipelago, about 10 miles off the coast of Alaska. Lynch does a great job at showing us the characters problem solving, only to be thwarted by the killer.
The characters, I'll admit, took me a while to warm up to. I didn't feel like these people were close enough to vacation on an island together for 3 months. The story does give us a bit of background and shows us how the 4 friends all came to meet in college, but it wasn't enough of a set up for me to believe the initial premise of the book. As we got to see the group work together to survive their situation, I then got to see more of how the friendship group dynamic worked and I became more invested in the characters.
I really loved the POV choices in this book. Initially, we only get the POV of the original 4 friends, but once we're on the island we get Sam's brother and his girlfriend's POVs as well. All of the characters have their own secrets that may or may not be connected to the events happening on the island. It was a little frustrating in the beginning to have a lot of the chapters have some veiled reference to that secret where a character would say something like "good thing we're having this vacation, I needed to get away from home for my own safety". This, obviously, helped the mysterious aspect of the book because we didn't know which character's secret was the key to figuring out the truth but it was a little too heavy-handed for my personal liking.
I needed more drama from these early-20-somethings! I will admit the reveal of who the killer is really got me good. However, the way the ending played out was extremely unsatisfying for me. After some reflection time, I think my main issue with the ending stems from the fact that we didn't get a really good view of this group before the events on the island so, as I said above, I couldn't get a good view of how the characters changed. I didn't have any plot-level issues with the ending and, in a lot of ways, I think it made a lot of sense. I think the ending would have been much more impactful from a character-level perspective if we had gotten to know the characters better and got to see just how much impact the events on the island had on their lives going forward.
Overall, this was a fun read, but there were a number of issues I had that, overall, impacted my enjoyment of the book. I think the isolation elements and POV choices were excellent. However, the character development and group dynamic was really lacking for me and I think if that was dialed in a little better, this could have been a really fantastic read.
Thanks to NetGalley and One More Chapter for the ARC in exchange for review
The Kindle edition was published February 2, 2021 but paperback edition has an expected publication date of November 16, 2021.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse and Drug use