I loved the sound of this book. I really admire authors who think outside the box, and this one certainly did. However, I found the pace of the book to be too slow, and struggled to connect with the story. I am sorry I didn't enjoy it more.

The blurb for Metronome had me intrigued, and the book itself didn't disappoint. I really enjoyed the style of writing and the slowly unfurling truth about how Aina and Whitney had ended up on the 'island' was very effective. The stark setting was brought to life brilliantly too - so beautiful and so harsh at the same time. A haunting and original dystopian story - one I'd definitely recommend to others.

"The body's the only real prison there is'.

Whitney and Aina were sent to remote island to carry out a prison sentence for raising a child without governmental consent. The warden promises he will return at the end of their sentence to give them parole and allow them to return to the mainland, with their child, when the twelve years are up. But he doesn't.

This book is SO slow. I wanted to love it and the philosophical elements are banging - who can we ever really trust? How powerful is the element of hope when faced with adversity? What is real and what isn't? But the actual story had so many holes and was just too long for what actually happened.

The prose was gorgeous, filled with ideas around human feelings and capabilities, but ultimately, the book sucked.

"Yes, she is intimate with hope. Knows the fickleness of its tides."

Thank you to NetGalley for the Arc.

In this Dystopian tale Whitney and Aina have been banished to an unoccupied island due to having a baby without permission. Their sentence is 12 years, after which the Warden will come and release them from their “prison” and they will return to civilisation.

The sentence has been tough; they have had to be self sufficient, learnt how to survive and have counted the days and years until their release. Aina longs to see their son Maxim, who was taken from them prior to their banishment. As the release date approaches, they work even harder to get everything in order and on the day they are packed, waiting for the Warden.

This is a story of control and manipulation, not only by the authorities, a dark and disturbing book.

I’m not usually a fan of this type of story, but I did get into the lives of Whitney and Aina, and I was invested in their outcome. I think that as the book was relatively short that it helped to keep me interested. Whilst I enjoy an ambiguous ending, this one lacked the oomph that it needed, too many questions left unanswered.

Thank you NetGalley.

Thoroughly compelling & absorbing speculative fiction, psychological thriller.

In an unspecified, dystopian-ish future, Aina and Whitney are exiled on an island, far from civilisation. They are limited in their exploration and activities by the Pill Clock. The clock has fingerprint recognition and they must be present every 8 hours for it to dispense a pill that prevents them from succumbing to the toxic spores that are being released from the thawing permafrost.
After nearly 12 years, their time on their island prison is due to end - but no-one comes on parole day. With the supply drops having stopped several years ago and no word from the Warden for months - what is really happening? And then a sheep appears from nowhere.

As the situation on the island becomes increasingly tense, we gradually learn the circumstances that led to their exile and can begin to piece together a little of what is happening in the outside world. (Although they aren't they focal point of the story, there's at least one authoritarian government and strong suggestions of climate breakdown.)

But mostly, this is an intimate, almost claustrophobic story of two people and how they deal with adversity and uncertainty. The glimpse we get of the past and the outside world ratchet up the tension until a breaking point is reached.

This is a book you won't want to put down, desperate to discover what is really going on.

I'm personally not a huge fan of deliberately vague endings but the rest of the book was so compelling, it doesn't really matter.

What a ride this book was to read. I sailed thru the pages and had a great time reading it. It was just what I needed

A strange, unsettling tale of a couple exiled to a remote croft after breaking the law by conceiving and keeping a child. The author paints a very grey and bleak world and left me wanting to know more. Though the writing is excellent, the slow pace of the narrative did not excite me.

Metronome is sadly as monotonous as it’s name suggests.
I had approached this book with high hopes: The premise of two people being exiled to a remote island for 12 years as a punishment is intriguing. A dystopian book perhaps? I still don’t know.
I don’t know ultimately why. I don’t know where the book is set. I don’t know what happened at the end. I don’t know if there were other people still around or not. I’m just left lost in the darkness that the author successfully created - just to be left behind in the mist. Wondering why I spent so much time on this book to still know nothing.
I can’t explain more without giving out spoilers so I’ll leave it there. It may just be me - after all it has been nominated for several awards….
Yan, tan, tethera methera pip….you may be counting down to the end too.
A frustrating read.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Bleak but beautiful. Really well written and poetic. I’d recommend it, but I’d also warn readers to be mentally prepared for the extreme bleakness!

Really interesting concept, and builds a genuinely unsettling world, dripfeeding additional information about the state approach to oppressing its citizens and why the central characters are on their island. There’s some very vivid descriptive work that makes the landscape come alive.

However, and for me it’s a deal-breaking however, I just couldn’t buy the various acts of deception that follow, or that are uncovered. This increasingly strained the credibility gap for me and As the book went on I’m afraid I disengaged.
An interesting failure in my view, albeit one that demonstrates potential from the author in the future.

Metronome by Tom Watson

A brilliant debut from Tom Watson - he’s certainly an author I shall be keeping an eye on.
Metronome is one of those books that kicks up more questions than it answers. This would usually veer on the irritating and frustrating, but instead, it made sense that there were so many questions left unanswered.
Where are they? We are told that Aina and Whitney have been exiled to an island for having a child without their country’s legal permission.
They can only survive if they take a pill every eight hours, which is automatically dispensed from a machine.
I wanted to know where this island was - I was thinking a remote Scottish island or maybe in Scandinavia. Did it matter that their location is never revealed? No. The bleak description of their island was so well fleshed out that there was enough sense of place to satisfy me without having a map!
Are they as isolated as they believe?
When a sheep turns up, they start to question if they are actually on an Island. But the eight hour intervals between their life-saving pills doesn’t give them enough time to explore the island in its totality. There are more clues - but I won’t spoil it.
And these pills? Do they really need them to survive? And what exactly has happened that makes them need them?
And finally, The Warden?
Who is this person and why have they had no contact from him for three years?
And has something happened to the outside world to explain his absence?
See? So many questions!
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this book, perhaps because it didn’t serve up everything to me on a plate.

* Thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the ARC.

A great read. You can really feel the isolation and paranoia that comes from it in the writing. Great characters you really buy in to. Highly recommended.

Metronome is Tom Watson’s debut novel and wow, what a debut it is. I don’t want to reveal too much about the plot as I think it’s one it’s best to go into blind.

In brief, Aina and Whitney have been exiled to an unknown island from an unknown country, and are tethered to a machine which dispenses a pill every eight hours that ensures their survival. They’ve been in exile for twelve years and are awaiting parole when one day a sheep turns up, but sheep can’t swim so where has this one come from?

The book begins slowly but the pace picks up speed and you hear the metronome ticking in your ear throughout. The pace and intensity increases as the story goes on, with an almost unbearable crescendo until the breathless last line.

I read this in two sittings, inhaling every word. Afterwards, I sat in stunned silence for about five minutes, then went down a rabbit hole looking up “yan tan tethera”, discovering that’s it’s an ancient method of sheep-counting traditionally employed by shepherds in the North of England.

If you like your books dark, dystopian and creepy, and you don’t mind not knowing exactly what is going on, then you’ll love this one. Brilliant stuff.

This book is interesting but bleak. I read to the end but found it difficult going as although the story is interesting as it unfolds it is so depressing. I could not work out what was real and what was the ravings of a mind driven mad by loss and isolation. The tone reminded me of 'The Road'. Not a book to read during a lockdown when you are missing your family.

I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did but unfortunately it was a pretty average read. The novel is what you would get if 1984 and Piranesi had a baby (with a sprinkling of The Handmaid's Tale) - sounds great in theory but alas, the aforementioned books just do it better.

Still, I enjoyed the worldbuilding but I do wish there had been more explanation of the state of the outside world.

Very bleak and dystopian!
I enjoyed this for the most part but felt very let down by the ending. Still don't know what happened and I realise that other readers feel the same. I know its good for readers to work out the bits in between the words but this felt a bit like cheating.
However the island was very well described, the way the couple have to isolate and live so rigidly. It's like an episode of Lost with only two people and with elements of Squid Game.

Interesting but not sure how I feel about this one.

A really interesting story, really gripping with the mysterious nature of the world with a plot and character relationships that slowly unravel throughout the story.

I feel really conflicted about this book…
I really enjoyed the storyline and thought it was really unique. It follows a couple who have been banished to an island because they had a child against their countries rules. The island is like a prison and their time on the island is their sentence but when their 12 year sentence is almost up, things start to go wrong and they lose sight of their freedom.
However, I was so confused at the ending and still feel a bit unsure as to what rating to give this book!!! Going to go with 3.5 stars and round it up to 4.

Aina and Whitney are exiled to an island for a crime they committed. Initially that is really all we know. When we meet them they have been there twelve years and expecting their parole soon. However their supply drops have ceased and they are surviving off the land and the occasional shipwreck. What does turn up one day is a sheep and sheep can't really swim - where has it come from? That start a chain of thoughts and events - this book follows that thread. They are tied to the croft that they are on as they have to take a pill every 8 hours to survive. It is dispensed to them via their thumbprint and only one at a time by a clock.

What secrets are involved in this story? You very quickly realise how little you know. The characters of Aina and Whitney emerge gradually. I guess Aina was the better developed character too and rather more rounded. The environment around the croft was part of the story but only very locally to them.

I really liked the writing here. There were times when it was quite poetic and it almost felt like it had a "beat" to it. Maybe the Pill clock had an impact or the repeated refrain of "Yan, tan, tethera, methera, pip". I found this interesting and knew immediately I'd seen the words before. Sure enough it is a sheep counting system that is probably Celtic in original and used in the north of Britain in the main. I still cannot honestly say why but it added something to the book for me.

When I started this book I only intended to read one chapter - I read five. I found this oddly fascinating. It's deep and compelling to me and with a real feeling of mystery around it. It has an eerie quality to it which I liked. That said I have to say that the ending didn't really work for me. When I read it it felt odd; looking back now it seems less odd but I can't say I loved it. Overall I found this a worthwhile read and one that seemed quite different to many of the books I I've read. A good choice maybe if you want something that is "different".

This is going to be the marmite of books. Though I really enjoyed it, I can see why others might not.

The narrative focuses on setting the scene; describing eerie and vivid landscapes that you're transported into very quickly. The storyline follows a couple that have been banished to an island. Splitting the narrative between past and present allows the reader to slowly uncover why the couple were banished.

The books as a whole was great. I ingested it in a couple of sittings and dound myself eager to know what om earth was happening. The book draws you in with the very human need to make sense of things (but a month after reading and there are still questions!)

On the whole, a really good read. I rated 3/5 stars initially, however I'm still thinking about it a month later so worthy of a 4/5 stars. I'm desperate to better understand the ending so will be recommending to others because I need to talk about it more!