Book Review: The Island, by Adrian McKinty
A vacation goes horribly wrong, like Deliverance-wrong.
Little, Brown and Company, 2022, 375 pages
IT WAS JUST SUPPOSED TO BE A FAMILY VACATION.
A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT CHANGED EVERYTHING.
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE CAPABLE OF UNTIL THEY COME FOR YOUR FAMILY.
After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.
But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.
When Heather and the kids are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.
Now it’s up to Heather to save herself and the kids, even though they don’t trust her, the harsh bushland is filled with danger, and the locals want her dead.
Heather has been underestimated her entire life, but she knows that only she can bring her family home again and become the mother the children desperately need, even if it means doing the unthinkable to keep them all alive.
I am a regular reader of Adrian McKinty, mostly his Inspector Duffy series about an Irish cop in the 80s. In The Island, McKinty turned to a more conventional thriller, with an American family taking a vacation in Australia that goes horribly wrong. This book follows the formula of a bunch of soft vacationers taking a wrong turn, a wrong bend in the river, or the wrong ferry, and suddenly finding themselves in Deliverance territory.
The Baxters are a pleasant all-American family with all-American problems. Tom, a successful doctor, lost his wife in a tragic accident a little over a year ago, and almost immediately married Heather, his much younger massage therapist. Heather does seem to actually love Tom, though her thoughts often turn towards the fact that she was poor and about to be unemployed when Tom swept her up. Tom's two kids, Olivia and Owen, are unsurprisingly not warming up to the new replacement mom their dad suddenly dropped into their lives.
When Tom travels to Australia for a medical conference, he agrees to bring Heather and the kids and make it a working vacation. So far, things are going kind of miserably, when they hear about a private island just off the coast with lots of wildlife that the kids haven't yet had a chance to see. Tom and Heather bribe a pair of shady ferry operators to take them over, "just for a quick look."
Of course, things go terribly wrong.
This setup worked well to establish the characters and the family dynamics, and The Island, once the story gets underway, is a pretty suspenseful thriller. Of course we're going to see Heather rise to the occasion, summoning skeletons from her own past and turning into a hot blonde sniper determined to protect her two step-kids, who will of course rise to the occasion by realizing that maybe their stepmom isn't the dumbest, most worthless person alive when she's trying to save them from a murderous clan of Australian rednecks.
But it's rough getting through the beginning, in which they all present themselves as the dumbest American cliches alive. Like, you've just been told this island is private land inhabited by reclusive islanders who don't like outsiders, and the guys taking you across couldn't be more sinister and untrustworthy if they were sitting on a porch playing banjos. Then when the Baxters take a drive across the island in their rented BMW, they almost immediately take a wrong turn (naturally) and then [Spoiler (click to open)]run over a kid on a bike and decide the smart move is to pretend nothing happened and try to flee back to the mainland before she's discovered.
Having taken that idiot ball and run with it, it's hard to work up much sympathy for Heather and Tom, though by the end, the islanders have proven themselves so malevolent that you kind of wish the Americans had run more of them over.
This was a suspenseful survival tale that despite Heather taking a few levels in bad-ass stays mostly grounded. The characters were all rather cliched though: besides Dr. Tom and his replacement upgrade wife, the two sheltered but decent kids, and the murderous hick Outbackers, there is a European couple that comes along for the trip to the island, and shows about as much instinct for self-preservation as a pair of quokkas.
I like seeing McKinty try other genres and Inspector Duffy is getting a bit worn anyway. This is a pageturner with some really horrific scenes, but it's not his best book.
Also by Adrian McKinty: My reviews of The Cold Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, In the Morning I'll Be Gone, Gun Street Girl, Rain Dogs, Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly and Hidden River.
My complete list of book reviews.
Little, Brown and Company, 2022, 375 pages
IT WAS JUST SUPPOSED TO BE A FAMILY VACATION.
A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT CHANGED EVERYTHING.
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE CAPABLE OF UNTIL THEY COME FOR YOUR FAMILY.
After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.
But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.
When Heather and the kids are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.
Now it’s up to Heather to save herself and the kids, even though they don’t trust her, the harsh bushland is filled with danger, and the locals want her dead.
Heather has been underestimated her entire life, but she knows that only she can bring her family home again and become the mother the children desperately need, even if it means doing the unthinkable to keep them all alive.
I am a regular reader of Adrian McKinty, mostly his Inspector Duffy series about an Irish cop in the 80s. In The Island, McKinty turned to a more conventional thriller, with an American family taking a vacation in Australia that goes horribly wrong. This book follows the formula of a bunch of soft vacationers taking a wrong turn, a wrong bend in the river, or the wrong ferry, and suddenly finding themselves in Deliverance territory.
The Baxters are a pleasant all-American family with all-American problems. Tom, a successful doctor, lost his wife in a tragic accident a little over a year ago, and almost immediately married Heather, his much younger massage therapist. Heather does seem to actually love Tom, though her thoughts often turn towards the fact that she was poor and about to be unemployed when Tom swept her up. Tom's two kids, Olivia and Owen, are unsurprisingly not warming up to the new replacement mom their dad suddenly dropped into their lives.
When Tom travels to Australia for a medical conference, he agrees to bring Heather and the kids and make it a working vacation. So far, things are going kind of miserably, when they hear about a private island just off the coast with lots of wildlife that the kids haven't yet had a chance to see. Tom and Heather bribe a pair of shady ferry operators to take them over, "just for a quick look."
Of course, things go terribly wrong.
This setup worked well to establish the characters and the family dynamics, and The Island, once the story gets underway, is a pretty suspenseful thriller. Of course we're going to see Heather rise to the occasion, summoning skeletons from her own past and turning into a hot blonde sniper determined to protect her two step-kids, who will of course rise to the occasion by realizing that maybe their stepmom isn't the dumbest, most worthless person alive when she's trying to save them from a murderous clan of Australian rednecks.
But it's rough getting through the beginning, in which they all present themselves as the dumbest American cliches alive. Like, you've just been told this island is private land inhabited by reclusive islanders who don't like outsiders, and the guys taking you across couldn't be more sinister and untrustworthy if they were sitting on a porch playing banjos. Then when the Baxters take a drive across the island in their rented BMW, they almost immediately take a wrong turn (naturally) and then [Spoiler (click to open)]run over a kid on a bike and decide the smart move is to pretend nothing happened and try to flee back to the mainland before she's discovered.
Having taken that idiot ball and run with it, it's hard to work up much sympathy for Heather and Tom, though by the end, the islanders have proven themselves so malevolent that you kind of wish the Americans had run more of them over.
This was a suspenseful survival tale that despite Heather taking a few levels in bad-ass stays mostly grounded. The characters were all rather cliched though: besides Dr. Tom and his replacement upgrade wife, the two sheltered but decent kids, and the murderous hick Outbackers, there is a European couple that comes along for the trip to the island, and shows about as much instinct for self-preservation as a pair of quokkas.
I like seeing McKinty try other genres and Inspector Duffy is getting a bit worn anyway. This is a pageturner with some really horrific scenes, but it's not his best book.
Also by Adrian McKinty: My reviews of The Cold Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, In the Morning I'll Be Gone, Gun Street Girl, Rain Dogs, Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly and Hidden River.
My complete list of book reviews.