I tried really hard to connect with this book after loving some of the authors other titles but I got to about halfway and decided to stop. Maybe I’m missing out on a real treat but I just couldn’t find myself connecting with the characters and it felt a little bit too
‘Lost’ for me.

average. not at all what I expected from M A Bennett, who was the authors of the much-loved book: S.T.A.G.S.

Omg talk about a roller coaster read wow this book kept me on the edge of my seat threw out I just couldn't put it down this writer keeps you hooked and once your hooked your not letting go I found this book thrilling the characters were fantastic and well thought out and the little clues all the way threw keep you guessing until the end this book stays with you long after you close the book this book is well worth the read I promise you wont be disappointed

So I have been a massive fan of M. A. Bennett's STAG series, so I was quite excited to read this book. Despite negative reviews, I was still going in with an open mind, but I didn't gel with this one as you can see. The premise was great, the idea of teenagers going to an island and fending for themselves and is quite popular in YA but I don't think this was well done. The whole idea of having the main protagonist is to have someone the reader can route for, but throughout the book, I don't think there was any reason why I as a reader should route for Link. He made some terrible choices, especially when they were on the island, which made him even worse than M. A. Bennett had set him up to be. His character was meant to be worse than the others who bullied him, but this does flip when they are on the island which could be some commentary on what power does to people, but I didn't buy it. I also had some major problems with the ending, and I wouldn't say I liked how it happened. I am also watching The Wilds on Amazon right now, and I hope it has a better ending than this book because I can see it going in the same direction. If it does, then I will be quite disappointed. I also know this is an earlier book and from reading FOXES as well this year, I know that M. A. Bennett has improved as a writer, so I will continue to read her books. This just was not the one.

Absolutely loved this book!

At first I wasn't keen. The main character was rude and misogynistic, snobby and dispicable! However, as I read on I realised this was on purpose.

Very cleverly written and twisted, definitely ideal for 15 year olds, or teens with a discerning eye for a twist.

5/5
(Thank you NetGalley for the proof, I also received a copy in the shop I worked in, so was able to see the layout, which adds to the experience of this book)

I really enjoyed M A Bennett's other two novels, but I was disappointed with this one. It just didn't work for me as well as the rest of her novels.

The Island follows Link as he arrives at a new school where he doesn’t feel he fits in. When he is forced onto a summer school trip with the worst of the bullies, things go from bad to worse when they end up abandoned on a desert island where only the strongest and the smartest will survive.

I found this a very quick read! The language is very easy to digest and it is quite fast paced, which I enjoyed.

However, I found all of the characters fundamentally unlikeable and was unable to sympathise with any of them, which definitely effected my enjoyment of the book. I wanted to feel sorry for Link, but he was just so unlikable and only grew more so throughout the book.

I also felt rather let down by the ending, it felt like it didn’t fit with the rest of the story and left me feeling dissatisfied.

This was a solid YA read, although i am finding myself slowly drifting away form the genre purely due to personal preference, I did enjoy it.
The characters were tolerable although most were terrible human beings and I loved the setting.
Although I did struggle to relate (being nearly 30) i would imagine it would be a book my daughter would enjoy n a couple of years.

I enjoyed this book overall and I read it quickly. I thought the premise was really interesting and I liked the island setting and 'Desert Island Discs' thread. I liked seeing how the characters dealt with being stranded compared with how they behaved at school. The reasons I didn't love this book were that the pace felt slow in places and the characters could have been fleshed out more.

I picked this book up because I enjoyed M.A. Bennett's last book, STAGS, and particularly the way she wrote about the uglier side of human emotion, and The Island really carries on in that vein. Bennett really takes you along with this unlikable narrator, making sure you're questioning his behaviour and still are somehow taken aback when he goes a bridge too far. I feel like Bennett has a real interest and strength in examining human behaviour in extreme or dangerous situations, and she really gets to play with that here, from the school setting to the island in question, without shying away from the unsavoury but also without feeling like things are done for shock value. This book felt both more unsettling in places than STAGS, but also resolved itself in a way that felt less unnerving, which was a cool combination, and I also really liked that each of the main characters had a depth beyond their, like, stock archetypes. I'll definitely be picking up the rest of M.A. Bennett's books as they come out!

Plot: ★★★
Characters: ★★
Readability: ★★

I thought I would really enjoy The Island; a group of teens, stranded on a desert island, the bullied and the bullies forced together, no one knows where they are… The concept was great, and having enjoyed Bennett’s previous book (S.T.A.G.S.) I had expectations of a fast-paced, twisting YA thriller. At only 304 pages, I figured it’d be a quick read, especially given that S.T.A.G.S. was so gripping. Ultimately though, I found The Island disappointing; it felt like a real slog to get into and it took me more than 2 weeks to finish. I remember reading Lord of the Flies at about 16 and really enjoying it, and I figured this would be a bit like a modernised version of that. While that was true in some respects, it just never hooked me the way I expected it to and it never got as tense as I expected.

Link has been bullied ever since moving to a posh British school, from having previously been homeschooled in the States. He reluctantly agrees to go on a school trip over the summer but everything goes wrong and he finds himself stranded on a deserted island with the worst of his tormenters. Link is quite an unlikable character: he has no real empathy or sympathy and he’s quite self-righteous. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else – there are some actions in the book which I’d say prove he isn’t half as smart as he thinks he is, but I can’t explain that without spoilers! The other characters on the island are stereotypical to a fault and while Bennett tries to give them back-stories, have characters grow etc, it’s all just a bit too predictable. In terms of plot, while there are twists, I thought they were so obviously foreshadowed that none of them were a surprise.

While the pop culture references seem like they could make the book date quickly, I really liked that the Desert Island Discs element was something a bit new and different so I couldn’t resist trying to come up with my own.

My Desert Island Discs: Honestly, I could spend weeks picking these, so I just went on gut instinct. They’re not in any particular order.

Linkin Park: One More Light & In the End
Moana: How Far I’ll Go
The Greatest Showman: The Other Side
Nashville: When the Right One Comes Along
Mulan: I’ll Make a Man Out of You
Blink-182: I Miss You
Ed Sheeran: Perfect

My book:

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince.
This was the hardest decision and I’m still not sure it’s right: should I pick something longer that’ll take ages to read? But this is my go-to re-read. In a slump? HP6. Sad and want something comforting? HP6. Plus, it’d be good for fanfic ideas which might help keep me entertained and ties into my luxury item…

My luxury item:

Pen & paper – I’m hoping it’s an endless supply of paper. I could write letters to people I loved and missed (obviously I couldn’t send them but I think it’d make me less crazy to remember there are other people in the world!), I could write fiction/fanfiction/poetry/journal entries, I could doodle, I could make observations on plants/wildlife etc.

It has been hard to write a review on this book because on the one hand I did like it but, on the other hand, I found it quite disappointing.

As I said I did like The Island, so of course, there was a certain amount of enjoyment which I found in this book. But I felt that the blurb was slightly misleading. I had imagine a thrilling Lord of the Flies meets The Breakfast Club retelling. THAT DEFINITELY DID NOT HAPPEN.

The main character Link is hardly a likeable character, from start to finish, but you do have to pity him. He is bullied relentlessly and of course, my heart went out to him. I found him unlikeable during his time on the "mysterious" island (I won't go into too much detail as I don't want to spoil it), he was massively misogynistic and it was painful to read at times. I frequently wanted to hurl my kindle across the room just to make it stop.

The other characters in the story portrayed the stereotypical American high school kids, which Link is very aware of. I found it was a super easy troupe to do it. I mean, it has been done so many times, so my interest wasn't greatly fulfilled.

The pacing of the book was slow but it held my interest. I thought something shocking was going to happen which would be worth the time I was putting into the book. In my opinion, the book could have been shorter, there were so many unnecessary parts in the book that just didn't need to be there.

The writing was in no way bad, I mean I did stick around for the whole book! As I mentioned at the start, I was expecting something entirely different to what I actually got which made me rate the book a lot lower. Shame really.

Book Review- The Island by M.A Bennett

I was given an advanced copy of this by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Link is the son of two hippy Professors who, after years of allowing him leeway in his education, suddenly force him to go to this prestigious school where the time you take to run around the quad secures your place in the school hierarchy.
Every single aspect of the school from your peers to your future is set on this ranking and, to be honest, that is the most believable part of the story.
Link, having gained the slowest time, is bullied relentlessly. No one wants to be in the crosshairs of the bullies so he is friendless. You would have some sort of empathy for him if Link wasn’t such a genuinely unlikable character.
Eventually Link tells his parents that he wants to leave school and they only agree if he goes to summer camp for two weeks.
He agrees and is looking forwards to being done with his schoolmates but the plane crashes on a deserted island where the seven characters suddenly have to survive on their own.
Because Link is the ‘smart one’ he suddenly has all the power and that power starts to go his head. Cue a role reversal and Link becomes the bully and has to learn that power corrupts.

The author spends the first almost 100 pages telling us how much Link loves his parents and how much of a great relationship they have and yet for THREE YEARS they don’t notice he’s being victimised?
Link himself is unlikeable. We are supposed to feel sorry for him but his inner thoughts are not those of a victim.
When he gets power he uses it to belittle and humiliate his fellow survivors and he justifies it with how badly he himself had been treated.
He forces the girls on the island to wear a short skirt and serve him and, if they refuse, then he starves them. He holds the power of life and death over his peers and he relishes their complicity.
He reminded me, quite honestly, of the insular, misogynistic, entitled men you find at comic con who believe that it is their interests, rather than their personality, which gets them bullied and that everything they do is justified because of their ‘suffering’. His change into a power-hungry tyrant really did not come as a surprise to me as he had already exhibited many of the danger signs.
The other characters in the story are very one dimensional..
There is the jock who has been bullying Link, his popular swim-team girlfriend, a closeted gay guy, a streetwise yes-man, an overachieving Asian girl and an emo girl. Ah, references to the breakfast club and its list of stereotypes gets quite a lot of mentions but, unlike the Breakfast club, these characters ‘layers’ are almost as stereotypical as their initial roles.
The jock is only as secure as his leadership role, as soon as anyone else has power he becomes irrational and petulant. The popular girl is secretly insecure. The gay guy is in love with the jock. The streetwise guy is actually pretty decent under it all. The overachieving Asian girl is overwhelmed and close to a breakdown and the emo girl is actually deep and smart.
None of these layers or stereotypes come as any kind of surprise.
In fact the best thing I can say about the book is that it is all so predictable.
This book is also going to be dated very quickly. It has so many pop-culture references that jolt you out of the story.
I didn’t like it and I felt it was a struggle to read.

This was pretty great. Not quite as good as S.T.A.G.S. but I'll read M.A. Bennett again. The slowly changing dynamics of the group was cool and I was 90% sure I'd spotted the twist but still shocked that the author actually went through with it (SO unethical!) Solidly entertaining, I read it in one sitting!

Unfortunately DNF. Read around 20% before quitting.
The story starts by revealing what happened in the end and the main pushing power was to learn why it did happen, and how. Unfortunately the characters and plot didn't grip me enough to be interested in finding out, this is one of the YA books that didn't work for me sadly.
The writing quality is good and the setting is Oxford. Might still attract YA readers.

Overall opinion of the book:


I throughly enjoyed The Island. If you enjoyed Lord of the Flies and the tv programme Lost, I'm certain you'll love this book too. The story mainly follows Link after his plane crashes on a desert island. At first he believes he's the only survivor, but he soon realises the other six students from his school are still alive. The plot follows their journey of survival and interesting interactions with each other. The people Link are stranded on the island with all treated him unfairly in school. The plot develops to show a change in power and opinions of each character. Without giving too much of the plot away, there are a LOT of twists and turns throughout and it's so interesting to see the character's reactions when faced with the need to survive.


This the first book of M. A. Bennett's I've read and it impressed me so much. I was honestly blown away by how fantastic and interesting it was! She goes into so much detail and it's clearly a well thought out plot; all of the loose ends are tied up nicely at the end of the novel too.


The overall storyline was great and I particularly liked that the flaws of each character, including Link are shown throughout. It makes the characters and their actions far more believable. By having a main character that displays some serious flaws on occasion, it emphasises how power and the need for survival can affect even the strongest and kindest of people. Link is far from the "perfect hero" and that was refreshing to read.


At first, it did take me a little while to get into the plot as the first quarter is slower paced compared to the rest of the book. However, the first few chapters cover crucial backstories of the characters, especially Link, which help the reader to understand the actions of each character when they're on the island. As soon as Link wakes up on the island itself I was engrossed in the plot, it was all so intriguing! Although I didn't completely guess the ending of the book, I did pick up on a few hints throughout. The ending left me shocked, in a good way!


A lot of the plot focuses on Desert Island Discs. In short, it's a radio show segment mentioned in the book that discusses what songs you'd want with you if you were stuck on a desert island. Link enjoys the show and begins to question each of the characters on their choices. Being a big lover of music, I found it intriguing to hear what songs everyone chose, and some of them took me by surprise.


The only part of the book I didn't enjoy as much was the epilogue. For me what happens felt a little cliche and I thought the novel rounded off really well just before the epilogue. It was still interesting to read and see how each of the character's lives progress in the future however.


In regards to spelling, punctuation and grammar, there were a few minuscule niggles I noticed, but nothing significant at all. As I didn't read a finished copy, this is to be completely expected. The overall book was written brilliantly.


After reading M. A. Bennett's bio at the end of the book, it was so interesting to see that she included parts of her own life in the book, such as Oxford University and U2. I love when authors do this.



Final thoughts:


I would definitely recommend The Island. It's fast paced, interesting and it completely engrossed me. Bennett is a fantastic author and I can't wait to read her first novel S.T.A.G.S in the future.


If you like books with interesting plots, complex characters and desert islands then this is definitely the book for you!

I really enjoyed this book.
I had read S.T.A.G.S. by M. A. Bennett prior to reading this, which I thought was good but I enjoyed this far more. Similarly to S.T.A.G.S., The Island starts off set in the world of a private school in the UK, in which bullying is rife and the lives of young people who don't fit are made a living hell. In fact, the bullying that Lincoln experiences is so much worse than could possibly be imagined, and is actually worse than the characters in S.T.A.G.S. experience, because it is so sustained. Therefore, the psychological effects The Island has upon him are only to be expected, but seeing his character develop under the extremes of the situation, is fascinating and really well thought out. There is also a mystery at play and it was really fun looking for clues, many of which I worked out, but not all of them.
If you enjoy reading books where young people are stranded on a desert island, a la Robinson Crusoe & Lord of the Flies, or books set in the world of private UK boarding schools, or even simply mysteries, this book is definitely for you & I will be recommending it to my students & young people who visit my library, as it is a really great read & I feel so many young people could learn a lesson from it!

I received a free e-arc from Netgalley, in return for an honest review.

I really loved the premise of this, and preferred it much more than STAGS! I loved the main character and how he developed throughout the book, and I was shocked by the ending!

The Island only took me a few days to read but I'll be damned if they weren't a hard few days. Being a mood reader I find I'm very often affected by the tone of the book I'm reading and for the first two-thirds of this book I had to make sure I was not becoming an evil tyrant in my own home (thankfully I wasn't but I was a little extra grumpy).

I had a lot of trouble dealing with the books main character Lincoln (only his friends and family call him Link and I'm certainly neither of those). Lincoln goes through an interesting and honestly slightly terrifying character arc that made me feel super uncomfortable which was a weird feeling because along side that I was thinking about how great this book was because I assumed that was the general idea. I'm certain that for at least the middle third of the book we're not meant to like Lincoln. I believe in the first third we're supposed to emphasise with him, in the middle we root for him a little and then progressively hate him and by the end I imagine we're meant to feel he's learned his lesson and completed his character arc to its fullest, all is forgiven etc. This bothers me. I have a reputation when reading to quite often detest a character and then fall in love with them (Rhys from ACOTAR, Rowan from TOG even Nik from Gemina) but I feel like the point when I'm suposed to forgive Lincoln in this book I actually hate him even more because of it.

I hate to be stereotypical in any way but this book is chock full of stereotypes, I understand why and I like that parts of that were turned on their head with most of the characters other than Lincoln himself. He refers to himself as a stereotyped nerd and listed off the things he did or that applied to him and why this made him the "lesser spotted nerd" who couldn't speak to girls, who locked himself in his room all day and wore glasses pretty much just because he thought it made him look nerdier. URGH. The worst part is he is a giant creep. Reading his actions, especially from his justified point of view, as a woman (I imagine this will also affect others of different genders as well - I don't often refer to mine and the way it makes me feel but in this case it felt like it made a difference to me personally) made me so incredibly uncomfortable I would make a point of watching some cutesy cartoons before bed to make me feel better.

This is fine. I was expecting to be a little horrified but to be honest I was imagining something a bit more physically violent and domineering which was what I was prepared for, I hadn't realised how psychological it would be and how it would affect me and I wish I was eloquent enough to add the right kind of trigger warning or similar to my reviews for the way this book made me feel. I say this is fine in regards to how the book made me feel for most of it because I was fairly certain we were not meant to like Lincoln and I admired the difficulty of writing this immensely unlikable character who is honestly a bit of a monster and I still do. I do personally however wish that the last third and the ending were different and would reflect Lincolns actions instead of rewarding him. I won't say much more because I do still want to keep this review as spoiler free as possible but I couldn't keep quiet about my feelings towards the main character.

I want to say that for the most part I liked this book which is why it got a XXX rating and not lower but trying to ignore Lincoln is kind of like trying to ignore most of the book. I liked the other characters and the parallels to the breakfast club etc. I really enjoyed some of the reveals about the other characters, Flora in particular after being "the emo" at school myself, I even enjoyed parts of the big revel towards the end despite calling it a good while before. The epilogue however just completely destroyed it for me and I've been thinking of reconsidering my rating because of it and only on reflection of the rest of the book did I decide to keep it despite me being so angry about it. I enjoy a book that can make me feel things intensely and I knew this book wasn't going to be an emotional walk in the park but it did leave me with an uncomfortable feeling and a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm hoping this is maybe just a very brave deliberate intention by the author, if this is the case it has been done immensely well.

A lot of other readers have said they prefered STAGS and after enjoying M.A Bennetts writing style and gutsy plays for the most part in The Island I've decided to give STAGS a go in the near future and see how they compare.

I flew through The Island, but I think overall it was a bumpy ride and a bit of a crash landing. To continue the air travel comparison, there was a very long take-ff, where we find out about our central protagonist, Lincoln, his relationship with the other young adults on the island, and his history.

I can safely say I didn't like one single character in this book - but Bennett did do an admirable job in creating characters who met the confines of their roles as jock, emo etc. The pace of the book does pick up a lot as we cruise through the scenes where Link and fellow schoolmates adjust to life on the island where they have crash landed.

I liked the Desert Island Discs theme that ran through the story, but the ending, oh my, the ending...

I had worked out fairly easily what was going on, there were certainly plenty of clues to help with that, but when I finished the book I was more unsettled than anything else...I was talking to myself in bed with indignation!