Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for approving me for this arc

I thought the concept of this book was really different which I enjoyed but I didn’t like the fact that the husband was killed almost instantly and some of the plot wasn’t played out in the narrative as well as it could have been I personally believe.

However, overall it was a good read and it was nice to see the relationship grow between the stepmom and her husbands children since his death.

This was an average read

This is my favourite thriller genre - the closed room thriller - and this one definitely didn’t disappoint.

Heather’s new husband Tom is on a conference in Australia so what better to do than to pack up your kids and all go on an adventure? Except that Olivia and Owen don’t really like Heather and boy do they make it known.

Whilst on a trip to Melbourne they come across across a couple of men who live on Dutch Island - a small private island full of wildlife they they’re willing to take the family to see - for a price. What that price ends up being I will let you discover!

This was a high octane survivalist thriller and o absolutely loved it. There was gore, there was blood and there was edge of your seat suspense.

I enjoyed the chain but this was so much more horrific as it could easily be a situation anyone could find themselves in. Can’t wait for the next one now 😜

Im so pleased this is being made into a series and cant wait to watch! a very menacing and frightening read, very vivid, dripping and memorable and I can rather horribly imaging this happening, brilliant!

A thoroughly creepy, dark, page turning thriller.

This book screamed at me to read it alone in the dark. No chance. It was read in one sitting but with the lights on and in a room full of people.

A tense, thrilling ride equivalent to the ghost train, just as you start to relax into it, you turn a page and get spooked again.

A rip roaring thriller that I could not put down.

Thoroughly enjoyed 5 starts from me.

As always, a plot line that hooks you from the very start until the final curtain.
To pick up one of his books you just automatically know you will be reading right into the night as time passes in the blink of an eye!

A breakneck, high-stakes run for your lives thriller. Young step-mother Heather accompanies her new husband and two teenage children on holiday to Australia. Desperate to see the koalas in the wild they end up on a remote island inhabited by unfriendly locals. As their dream trip becomes a nightmare, Heather must do battle to keep her family safe. A white-knuckle fun read.

WoW!!!! The Island by Adrian McKinty was Brilliant from start to finish That will have you sitting on the edge of your seat! I loved it. Now that’s what I call a brilliant thriller.

"It was just supposed to be a family vacation.
A terrible accident will change everything.
You don't know what you're capable of until they come for your family"

This book was a roller coaster ride.....So hold tight!!!!

Heather who is an American massage therapist, was making a big change to her life. She was moving from a small country town to Seattle, to marrying Tom, who is a widowed doctor with a young son Owen, twelve, and Olivia, fourteen.

Just 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 the coast of Victoria and is off-limits to outside visitors. The family just wants to see native wildlife and make their way onto the ferry, Then taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.

As soon as they all set foot on the island, they find out it's run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything around them feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare, that soon begins!.

Heather and her step children are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.

Do they escape and find each other on the other side?

Tom's Children have to trust Heather to survive!

Or will it be too late for them to see each other again as a whole family?

WoW!!!! Hold on Tight.............I highly recommend this book! it was Excellent

Big thank you to NetGalley and especially to Orion Publishing for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

Early on in this pulsating, highly enjoyable thriller, the main character is given a few words of warning about ‘the world’s deadliest snakes and spiders’ and a list of movies in which hitchhikers are murdered in the bush by maniacs. ‘It’s an entire genre Heather! It must be based on reality.’ So we can’t say we weren’t warned.

There’s no doubting Australian crime fiction has been popular for a few years, and I’ve read and enjoyed a few, including big hitters such as Jane Harper and Chris Hammer. The stark and distinctive landscape, wide open spaces and oppressive heat provide a great backdrop - it’s perfect for crime fiction. Although Adrian McKinty is originally Irish, he has been living in Melbourne since 2008, so he knows the country and genre well.

I first encountered McKinty a few years ago and read his excellent Detective Sean Duffy series, set in the North of Ireland during the 1980’s, so I knew I was in good hands. It’s a while since I read it but I remember it being fast paced, fairly brutal and graphic and did a scarily good job of recreating the ‘troubles’ of my childhood. So I was keen to see what he do in the book. I knew he was the writer of ‘the chain’, a recent bestseller, but I haven’t read it.

Heather has married Tom Baxter, a widowed doctor with a young son and a teenage daughter. He’s a bit older than her, but he’s come along at an opportune moment in her life and she does love him. They’re based in Seattle, but when a opportunity arises for them to visit Australia, where Tom is giving a keynote speech at an orthopaedic conference, they take a family trip, visiting Uluru and Sydney before landing in Melbourne.

With the kids not yet adapting to their new ‘mother’, they’re determined to spend as much family time together as they can, and take a drive out of Melbourne for a few hours before Tom’s speech. A chance encounter at the side of the road presents them with the opportunity to take a short ferry journey out to a private island to see some koalas in their natural habitat. It’s here where an accident occurs that puts an end to the family day out. Tom doesn’t get to talk about knees at the orthopaedic conference but they do see Koalas, but perhaps not in the way they intended.

I’m not going to say anything else as that would spoil the fun - and what fun there is. Completely over the top, at times violent and brutal, but delivered with style in what turns out to be an absolute page turner of the highest standard. Adrian McKinty is very skilled at writing a rip roaring ‘cat and mouse’ thriller that never lets up. Definably equally adept at Australian crime fiction as Irish detective series.

There’s plenty of humour in the there too - I particularly liked the reference to Chekov late on in the book, as it had certainly occurred to me before that. And Heather is a great, spiky character who grew on me as the book progressed, well able for some of the adversaries that she faces.

McKinty is great at ratcheting up the tension as far as he can. He uses as much of the environment as he can - snakes, dingoes, red ants, abandoned buildings, machetes, hidden caves, cliffs, - you name it, McKinty uses it. The storyline never seems to let up and just when you think you have a handle on it, you get hit with something else.

I read a tweet a few days ago from none other that Stephen King, a man who knows a thing or two about writing thrillers, praising ‘The island.’ I read his book ‘on writing’ a few years ago where he talked about the ‘what if’ approach to writing - letting your brain think of what might happened if events had taken a different turn. It seems that this is how the idea came to McKinty a few years ago, whilst on holiday in a different part of Australia where he nearly had an accident, so it’s advice that definitely works.

I thoroughly enjoyed this - just a tense, relentless story that grips you from when they reach the island. It’s not the usual sort of book that I read but I really enjoyed this story, best enjoyed if you just go with it. Definitely a welcome addition to Australian crime fiction.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Little, Brown and Company and to Adrian McKinty for the opportunity.

After loving The Chain, I was so excited to have the opportunity to read The Island! It was a refreshing thriller storyline that had me absolutely gripped right from the start, there were so many twists and turns and you really felt the tension that the characters were feeling through McKinty’s writing. I loved the character development and there were definitely some parts that pulled on the heartstrings too. A great read!

Description 🔖

Heather has found the man of her dreams in Tom. When they marry, Heather doesn’t just get Tom, she gets his teenage daughter and young son too and the new Baxter family go on a trip to the Australian outback. It’s a work trip for Tom, but the family use it as an opportunity to all spend time together and bond.

Out on a family day, the children are intent on seeing a koala bear and some locals tell them about Dutch Island. It’s off limits for tourists and non-locals, but it’s rich with wildlife. The Baxters find themselves on a ferry over to the island and things very quickly turn bad. There is a disturbing feeling straight away and after a terrible accident, Tom and Heather know that this was a bad idea.

Heather and the children end up being separated from Tom and it is Heather’s responsibility to try and get her and the children off the island. Considering that the children don’t trust her, the bushland is highly dangerous and the locals do not want them there, the odds are not in Heather’s favour, but she’s prepared to do the unthinkable to get to safety.

General Thoughts 🤔

Well this book was certainly edge of your seat, gripping, thrilling, madness. It was one of those books that just doesn’t stop being tense. When I thought there may be a silver lining, the clouds started rolling in and everything got progressively worse. The whole concept of the book is about whether or not the Baxters will make it off the island and my god I was invested in that family finding their way home.

Don’t get me wrong, some of it seemed a little far fetched in retrospect. Heather was a massage therapist with some Liam Neeson style very specific set of skills. Could she really have married into this family without any of them knowing she was capable of all that? Maybe so. There was just a little niggle in my head about it.

Characters 👫👭👬

So ignoring the massage therapist point, Heather was an absolute bad ass and I would like to be her when I grow up. Was there anything that this woman did not know?! At the start of the book, she came across as a little bit “meh” and I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to feel about her. But as soon as things started to go awry, she well and truly came into her own and I loved her.

I really enjoyed the relationship between Heather and the children; Olivia and Owen. Their relationship was obviously quite taught and I’m not sure that either side really wanted to give the other a chance. Until they had no choice but to. It was lovely to see the children start to trust Heather and it was obvious that they would have done anything to help each other get off that island of horrors.

Writing Style ✍️

The way this story was told was probably what I enjoyed most about the book. If I could have read it from behind a pillow, I would have. There were some really tense scenes and some really uncomfortable scenes and when an author can draw those intense feelings of discomfort out of a reader, it amazes me.

I also loved how the island was described within the book. It was done to such a level that I felt that I could see it clear as day in my mind. That only increased the intensity for me. It was like I could feel the bush against my skin as I was reading.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to read this book as I thoroughly enjoyed it. If I had had the opportunity I think this definitely could have been a book I devoured in one sitting. If you like to feel uncomfortable and on edge, then this is a must-read for you.

I am now officially a Heather stan account. She is one of the best characters I have read about in a thriller for a long time and what shocks me most about that is she was written by a man. Something I avoid like the plague usually but Heather was so well written I was so surprised. I think she was really level headed and I enjoyed watching her make decisions throughout the novel and the way she bonded with the children.
The island setting was definitely a spooky one, the family who inhabit the island genuinely frightened me and I had a great time reading about them and seeing more about them even when I was scared.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. I have chosen to write this honest review voluntarily and it reflects my personal opinion.
This book is described as a thriller and I agree it is fast-paced, written in a way that made me feel as though I wanted to carry on reading to find out what happened next. I didn't find any of the characters likeable apart from Petra although I had some empathy with Owen as a medical diagnosis rather than emotions caused many of his actions. Some of the content is barely believable, such as the time able to go without water on top of being injured and the ability to remain unseen for so long. Some of the descriptions border on horror and as that is not a genre I enjoy I believe there should have been a warning in the publisher information. The final twists were so numerous as to make the story incredible and I felt as though the story had meandered through a great deal of trying to hide before suddenly coming to an abrupt end.
I persisted in reading this book to the end but rather wished I hadn't, there are much better books awaiting on my 'To Be Read' pile.

I’d heard a lot of mixed reviews about this book, so I just had to give it a try! Based in Australia, we meet an American family who are on a business/holiday trip. Tom is a doctor and is with his younger second wife, Heather and his two children, Owen and Olivia. The children don’t have much time for Heather, but she is using this holiday to try and build bridges with them. When they take a trip over to Dutch Island with some locals to see the koalas, things take a dark and sinister twist.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. The initial part of the story was a little slow, but it did well to build on the background of the characters. I didn’t initially like Heather, although did feel for her having to try and win the children over. She did grow on me as the storyline moved on with her character growing stronger with every page turn. Similarly, I didn’t like Tom at the beginning either, but the difference being my dislike for him grew as well! The inhabitants of Dutch Island were very strange indeed. Ruled by the indomitable leader of the family, Ma was certainly a force to be reckoned with, with the rest of the gun-toting family just as blood-thirsty and barbaric as she was.

The story’s pace built as the book moved on, gathering a fast momentum. For me personally, the excitement started when the family reached the island and then this turned from excitement to wonder to just pure horror!! I became hypnotised by the chase of Heather and her family and felt every little jolt of fear that ran through them. Filled with bucketfuls of suspense, tension and scenes which will get your heart beating faster, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat wondering if they will ever get off the island alive! This was a great thriller of a read! Would definitely recommend!

Wowzers!!!! I think I forgot to breathe reading this. I cannot remember the last time I read a book in one sitting but I could not put this down.

Heather and her new husband, Tom, and his children Owen and Olivia take a trip of a life time to Australia. A chance encounter leads them to a private island just off the coast in search of koala bears and that's where the lovely holiday ends.

Fast paced, gripping, and at times heart stoppingly terrifying this is a fabulous follow up to The Chain.

I usually love a good a psychological thriller especially those where people have to find inner strength to survive or escape but this one was just too far fetched for me! It started off well, setting the scene in the first few pages but then went downhill from there. It wasn't an easy read, the text was often hard to follow, also the descriptive prose seem to go on and on and the way the characters develop was far too unbelievable. How a 24 year old from America knows how to do the things this character was doing in the outback was just beyond belief..
I haven't previously read anything about from this author so maybe his writing style is just not for me, I can't give it more than 3 stars

Wow! The Island is sure to be THE thriller of the year! It is literally the vacation of nightmares. Adrian McKinty belongs on everyone must-read list. The story follows Heather, Tom, and his two teen kids who haven't exactly taken to their new stepmom yet. They go on a vacation to Australia and it sounds like a perfect way to bring their family together. A side trip on a ferry to a locals-only island seems like the adventure they were waiting for, but it quickly turns to a nightmare when an accident sets the island's inhabitants on a course for what they view as justice, but the family is running for their lives. This is one high-stakes, action-packed, fast-paced thriller. It is truly impossible to put down until you get to the final page. Highly recommended!!

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 a new family together, but once they're deep in the Australian outback - things start to go wrong. A terrible accident changed everything.

How far will Heather go for her new family?

This is an intense read - The Island is an edge of the seat, page turning story that allows us to experience the suspense of a deadly game of cat and mouse.

I could not put this book down, instantly gripped with the characters and guessing where this story was going to take me. I enjoyed the strong female characters of Heather, Ma and Petra and their natural instinct to protect the ones they love.

I found McKinty's writing very visual - I read this book like I was watching an action packed film.

Another gripping page turner from Adrian McKinty that kept me engrossed but didnt completely satisfy my reading needs (I know, that feels quite contradictory, but that was how i felt reading the book!)
Heather and her husband Tom, plus two teenage stepchildren, are on a trip to Australia to accompany Tom to a conference. Whilst there, they decide to go wildlife exploring- you cant go to Australia without seeing some koalas can you?! They find themselves on the remote Dutch Island, which used to be a prison colony and is now home to a farm and its owners.
A freak accident on the island turns everything on its head, and suddenly the trip turns from a dream to a nightmare. Tom knocks a cyclist over - she's part of the family who live on the island and they are not taking it lightly. All of a sudden, Tom Heather and the children are tied up in a barn waiting for the family to decide what to do with them - and they know that its not going to be pretty.

I really enjoyed the pace of the book and the tension I felt whilst reading it, but some parts felt a little too convenient - at the start of the book, Heather buys a penknife which comes in very handy later on, for example, and its amazingly handy that she grew up learning survival skills. It also grated that Heather was so much younger than Tom, it felt like a Hollywood cliche and didnt need to be part of the story. So highs and lows for me but i enjoyed reading it at the time
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read it

I was totally engrossed in this book. I liked the main character and the storyline was gripping.
A real page turner of read.

I was very excited by this story, getting off an island full of secrets and terror. Although the dialogue was sometimes child like I did enjoy the story which was electric at times, an island with deadly dangers around every corner was a riverting read