Great locked room thriller

I really enjoyed Claire McGowan's locked room mystery where a group of 8 adults and 4 children gather on an isolated Scottish island to celebrate a birthday. What could possible go wrong??

I did find it a bit confusing at first trying to work out in my head who was who and what was their relationship to the rest of the group. But once I got my head round that I flew through this book. I'd describe it as a mash up of And Then There Were None and I Know What You Did Last Summer. There are lots of twists along the way and I'm afraid I didn't guess whodunnit. Despite the large cast of characters I can't say I actually liked any of them, though I did have some sympathy for Amira.

The book is excellently read by Clare Corbett, who is brilliant at capturing children's voices. She is definitely one of my favourite narrators!

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Twisty

This has lots of twists and turns and had me gripped. Even though the story line was very basic, it was delivered well.

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Fun idea but massively overwritten/too long

This is an And Then There Were None for the modern age: the plot (while obviously far fetched and stretching credulity in places) is quite a fun tricksy one, and the characters are all utterly awful and unsympathetic. Fair enough; for an ATTWN type story, that tracks—but then you really do have to crack on with it. The whole thing just takes ages and ages: the story takes place over just two days and nights on a remote island, but it feels like it’s going on forever. There is endless repetition of the set up—constant reminders that it’s cold and getting dark, that everyone is scared, that everyone is horrible, that so and so is missing, that the doors don’t lock because it’s on a remote island, etc etc. The police officer investigating the mystery talks about getting home while it’s still light so many times I was yelling at the book…

If any of the characters were in any way engaging, I would have way more patience with the thing unfolding, but if the set-up is the classic ‘these people are all awful, which one will die next?’, the indulgence of continual repetition and lingering on inner monologue covering the same ground from slightly different angles just becomes boring.

There are some clever twists and reveals, although again, sometimes overwritten so you’re way ahead of the story. I was engaged enough to get to the end, and while I rarely abandon books, it had just enough going on that I stayed to the finish.

But my main takeaway is that it just needed way, way more pace—cut a bunch of the internal reflections and hand wringing. Additionally, more could have been done to broaden out the characters—there are only nine principles—and perhaps then I would have had more interest in them before they gradually got their comeuppances. Each was a two-dimensional rendition of a type, at best, and very little was done to explore why they were how they were, or whether they had any redeeming qualities. It was all too superficial and derivative to engage me.

I really enjoyed the author’s Let Me In—also a twisty psychological thriller with some similar themes of guilt, regret, secrets, parenting—but that one was so much deeper in characterisation and nuance.

Narrator was okay—pretty good accents and good differentiation between a lot of different characters; excellent children’s voices—but her descriptive passages were often clipped and monotonous. Think she may have been wishing the story would get a move on as well as her audience…

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Tight new take on Christies masterpiece.

You could (if you were spiteful) simply dismiss this book as an update of And Then There Were None. Not that thats so bad as it is (and i will fight anyone over this) the greatest whodunnit ever written. But in fact this book stands up on its own right enough. I stayed up til 3am to finish it and maybe it was like having that buzz of reading ATTWN for the first time but only because it is a good well written thriller well worth the trouble.

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Really….

So you can’t swim, you find the hidden radio which you could use to get help but you choose to set off on a paddle board….

Sort of ruined the (otherwise good) story for me.

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A thrilling tale

Great read which draws you in from the first line and keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end. It is taut, compelling and completely impossible to "put down". The characters are well drawn and the plot is quite a ride!

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Crazy plot

Compelling, entertaining, so much drama. A little hard at times to keep track of all the different characters and situations, but hope to revisit and clarify. Enjoyed overall.

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Good narrator

Loved Clare Corbett’s narration. Always keeps me listening.
Not a bad book for free. A bit long winded and not a good ending. Not one of her best.

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1 person found this helpful

Hard to put down..

The characters were well drawn, and the story moved fast, changing viewpoints as it progressed. The book was hard to put down because you really want to hear all the secrets of past lives and find out what has happened to all the characters.
However, there were quite a few instances when you have to suspend disbelief and plough on. Lots of twists!

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Brilliant!

One of the best books that I’ve listened to in a while! Great storyline and characters well written, to provoke emotion. 10/10

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