Author: Sarah Singleton
Published: Simon & Schuster (1st April 2010)
No. of Pages: 294
Grade Rating: C
Otto, Jen and Charlotte have planned the trip of a lifetime to India for their gap year, before going their separate ways to university. For Charlotte, it's an opportunity to get involved in an environmental project and finally feel like she's doing something worthwhile; for Otto, it's the perfect opportunity to take some real photos to help his career as a photojournalistic; for Jen, it's the realisation of a lifelong dream. But when Otto discovers the body of a girl on the beach, things take a sinister turn as he finds himself a prime suspect in her murder. Together Otto, Charlotte and Jen start to unravel the mystery behind the girl's death. Can they discover the truth and clear Otto's name and even if they do will they be able to handle what they find as their dreams of paradise crumble around them...
The Island was a novel shrowded with mystery and intrigue, a unique plot and a cast full of shady looking characters. What Jen, Otto and Charlotte think will be the trip of a lifetime turns out to be the start of a nightmare.
Sarah Singleton has been awarded numerous prizes for her previous work so my expectation of The Island was high. The book started off at a steady pace with the first disaster just at the end of the second chapter. I was engaged to find out more about the story from then on but unfortunately my expectations fell rather flat. I think that Singleton definitely tried to add drama and tension to the plot, but I was never fully hooked. I could have easily put the book down and not even thought twice about picking it up again. The whole book was being built up to the point where you thought the murderer was to be exposed but to my slight (not slight but huge) annoyance, this so-called culprit was never identified. This is definitely a murder mystery, only because you never find out who the killer is.
The parts of the story I did enjoy were the flasbacks of where the three main characters met. I found this a nice addition to the story and worked well as a way for you to become fully introduced to each one. I feel the novel worked well in third-person as it would have been too complicated to hear a first hand account from each person of the already jumbled plot. The characters were well-rounded and three dimensional with qualities as well as flaws like every person has. I did find the characters the best feature of the book as they did have certain life like descriptions with varying personalities and styles.
The book was very well-written and extremely descriptive which was good so you pictured the scenery of India quite well but after a while became one of the things that really stopped the story from flowing well. I thought it could have picked up the pace a little instead of describing everything that came into sight. I'm not sure if I'll be interested in reading the sequel, but it would be nice to see what happens next.
2 comments:
This sounds like it's worth a read! I always like a bit of mystery in a book. Thanks for a great review.
At first I thought it sounded good- but then you said you could have put it down and not thought twice, so I'm not sure.... but [as always] I enjoyed reading your review!
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