by Sarah Goodwin
Rating: ⭐4/5⭐
Eight strangers.
One island.
A secret you’d kill to keep.
When eight people arrive on the beautiful but remote Buidseach Island, they are ready for the challenge of a lifetime: to live alone for one year.
Eighteen months later, a woman is found in an isolated fishing village. She’s desperate to explain what happened to her: how the group fractured and friends became enemies; how they did what they must to survive until the boat came to collect them; how things turned deadly when the boat didn’t come…
But first Maddy must come to terms with the devastating secret that left them stranded, and her own role in the events that saw eight arrive and only three leave.
Maddie is a woman on her late 20s. She’s unhappy with herself and the dreary, secluded, lonely life she’s kinda always lived. Her parents have recently passed away and she just needs a reason, any reason, to escape. To get away for a while. Cue The Last Refuge, a reality TV type show where 4 men and 4 women are left stranded on a remote Scottish island, without much of anything. Their only mission? Survive for a whole year.
"So, what are you most looking forward to, should you get chosen to take part in The Last Refuge?" This time, my answer was genuine, unconsidered. "The escape." From my life, my grief, from myself. I just had to get away.
Now, isn’t that quote wildly intriguing?
I’ll admit, thrillers are not a genre I pick up very often. I’m not sure why, really, since I love a good mystery. The way it keeps me on my toes and turning page after page to find the answers and slowly piece the story together. And the feeling of accomplishment when the whole puzzle is finally revealed. I always end up loving those types of books, but dodge them like my life depends on it when the time comes to pick something new to read.
First of all, let me just say, I don’t think the blurb does the novel justice. Based on it, I thought this would be the story of a survivor recounting the horrors that befell her and her fellow islanders; like a look into the past. It’s not. As readers, we live the horrors in real time, and every once in a while there’s a jump into the future, to where the protagonist is being interview in a TV show about what she went through. We don’t even see much of the future, much of The After. We don’t even see all that much of The Before either. It’s all about the island. About all the gruesome, grim stuff that can happen when people revert to their most basic instincts. When being civilized gets thrown out the window and survival of the fittest takes center stage.
And survive they did. Throughout the first half of the book, there was this very strong feeling of foreboding. They’d been left on the island, only a few weeks had passed, and already things were getting tense. A heavy uneasiness permeated everything. Like, things seemed to be going ok, but I was constantly on edge. Constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Constantly waiting for one of them to snap and get violent. I was anxious. And unsettled. And low key scared. It was both awful and amazing. With every new page my dread grew and grew.
I loved the blend of easy going and poetic of the writing style. It wasn’t flowery, or overly complex, but it had such poignant and effective analogies and descriptions. It was so evocative and raw. The British slang I was mostly unfamiliar with and at times had to rely on context to get the general gist, but nothing too bad. If I were to have one complaint about this book, it would be the use of single quotation marks instead of the standard double quotation on the dialogues. I had a hard time rolling with that, my attention got snagged every time anyone said anything. But I didn’t have any other issues with the writing besides that.
In any case, spoiling a thriller is basically sacrilegious, so I’ll leave you to experience the horror and disquiet for yourself. It’s totally worth it.
**I received an advanced e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Netgalley and Avon Books UK for the opportunity**
What should I read next?
