This is a brilliant book essentially of photography of Scotland by an author, lucky to have experienced Scotland during the recent lockdown.
Full of wonderful photographs that capture the essence of Scotland the book will entice any reader to book their next holiday to Scotland.
Also essential information such as where to stay, eat and walk is an added bonus,

Thank you for NetGalley and the Publisher for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

I love everything about the Scottish outdoors. I've spent most of my vacation days of past few years (pre-pandemic) exploring the Highlands and planned to do Island hopping the following years.
The Island hopping is still in planning stage so I was very happy to be approved for this book and see if it was of any use for me.

Now this book has some very good elements and some badly structured insufficient ones. In my opinion where it went wrong was that they wanted to combine a guide book with a travel book with photographs.

The photographs and the layout for each location tip per Island was very eye catching. However The "Best of" part was very unorganised looking, especially with the weird bullet/unordered list layout. Even though the main points are in bold, it just looks very messy. I would have preferred a new line for each bullet point to make it more transparent. I also feel that the tips losted here are very random and I would just refer back to this as somewhere between an indepth guide book and a photobook.

I can't tell if the listed locations are indeed the best and I also believe I shouldn't since what is worth seeing is very subjective. I've been to the Isle of Skye and there are quite a few absolutely gorgeous spots, like the Fairy Pools, Coral Beach, Fairy Glen etc. that I was missing from this list. I also would have find it useful to have an order to the listed locations, have the ones closer to one another listed close as well.
The "map" at the beginning of each chapter/island presentation is very pretty and provides unity, but is also quite useless in reality. It just looks good.

All that said this is a book with lots of beautiful photos with some decent tips and an overall look and content that would be a great addition to a collection of similar books. But I would not necessarily use this to plan my future trips.

Mixed thoughts for a mixture of a book – this could well have fallen under the Amber Books imprint of high-class coffee table volumes, where the pictures speak a thousand words and the captions struggle in their wake. Instead it's an effort at trying to be the boutique, image-based product and at the same time a travel gazetteer. Our author scribbles a few words about copious outstanding sites and sights on all the Scottish islands, giving completely redundant latitude and longitude data for each and every one and nare a single mention of entry costs. And just when you think this is on the more Zen side of armchair travel books, you get a page demanding you eat, stay and walk here and there and nowhere else on pain of the publication losing its product placement income.

Now, I'm not actually suggesting this is anything like one of those old, 1950s baksheesh-reliant travel books, but hodge and podge are seldom far apart in trying to define just what kind of book this is. It wants you to know where is where and what is what, as long as it doesn't have to tell you how to get there; it foregrounds the photographer's craft just as much as it does the croft in the image. It will be used afore ye go, and when you get back, but never once while you're there, wherever the there concerned actually is. It's a book that can parade no end of qualities much more easily than it can any argument for it being an essential browse, and in that way comes across as on the level of a good in-flight magazine article – for captive audiences only.

Such a beautiful book, it’s made me want to back a bag and go visit! I’ve heard so many wonderful things about Scotland and it is on my list of places to visit.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

Lovely book of 200+ pages about Scottish islands. Beautiful images that make you desperate to visit, with one page of information per island that makes it perfect to digest in smaller chunks. Exactly the type of book I like to get out and browse through regularly

A guide that made me travel to gorgeous places and wish I was there.
Great pictures and information about the isles and relevant places.
Very useful and lovely.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine