An atmospheric and twisty mystery thriller that would benefit from a bit of condensing Rebekah Murphy, a separated mother of two, agrees to visit a remote uninhabited island with her brother, aspiring writer Johnny, who is researching for a new book. However, when the two arrive, they find themselves targeted by killers for reasons unknown, and Rebekah wakes up and discovers she is trapped on the island for the winter with Johnny nowhere to be found. As she fights for survival, she also struggles to identify what exactly it is that led to her, and her brother being targeted. Meanwhile, back home in New York City, Detective Frank Travis is approaching his retirement and desperately searching for a missing girl. He knows that her case will likely be abandoned once he leaves the force, but what he doesn’t know is that her disappearance is linked to Rebekah, and only with her help might he be able to crack the mystery. This was overall a very well-written and enjoyable crime mystery thriller story, with a multi-layered protagonist, a complex and twist-packed plot and plenty of red herrings and false leads sprinkled in to keep the reader guessing. The opening was very gripping, and the initial parts of the book where Rebekah was trapped on the island were packed with non-stop tension and a permeating atmosphere of fear and despair. Crow Island itself was almost like a character in the story – dark, harsh, and foreboding – and you really felt Rebekah’s claustrophobia and panic as she struggles for her survival, all whilst desperately missing her young daughters and trying to figure out why sinister men are hunting her. I liked the character of Frank Travis, a detective approaching retirement who just wants to solve his last case for the sake of the missing girl and her family, and his sections of the book almost felt like a separate crime story at first. The author then craftily joins together the two plots, and the links all become clear in the final few chapters, where surprising secrets are revealed. Unfortunately, despite having all the ingredients for a great crime thriller, I didn’t find myself enjoying this story as much as I thought I would. I didn’t really engage with Rebekah and found her intense love for her daughters and her almost panicked fear of being separated from them didn’t really gel with her career as a supposed successful trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, who would have spent long periods of time without seeing her kids. Whilst they were initially very tense and readable, I also found some scenes of her struggling to survive on the island were a bit repetitive and some action scenes included too much detail which made them feel drawn out and left me struggling to keep my focus, losing some of their tension as a result. I felt that there was a lot of background information included which didn’t end up really contributing to the overall story, which further added to the lengthy feel of some sections, and some red herrings felt like they were inserted just for the sake of it and were never really explained. Finally, the last quarter of the book really did drag a bit and needed tightening up to avoid squandering the build-up of tension that had developed throughout the preceding story. In conclusion, I did enjoy reading this book, and it is a solid crime thriller, but feel that it needed editing and shortening to maintain its high tension and the excellent fearful atmosphere it initially generates. I certainly would read more by this author but would probably pick something a little shorter. Daenerys Elite Reviewing Group received a copy of this book to review.

This is quite a slow burner told primarily by Rebekah who is stuck on a deserted island and fearful for her life and in part by cop Travis who is tasked with finding a different missing person during his final days on the force. We gradually find out how Rebekah came to be in the island through flashbacks in the first half of the book along with finding out how she’s trying to cope in the days since she was stranded there. It’s quite a desolate read with as much focus on her trying to survive there as there is untangling the how’s and why’s. There’s plenty red herrings to keep you on your toes and question who is behind this but it lacks suspense. Overall its a good detailed atmospheric survival read.

Rebekah Murphy is stranded on an abandoned island with a killer after her, all because she knows a secret... but she doesn't know what that secret is. All she knows is that she must survive to get back to her children... Meanwhile Detective Frank Travis searches for Rebekah. Where is Rebekah? Where is her brother? What secrets are there? All is revealed as we race through the thrilling tale and everything comes together. Not a bad read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book in return for my honest feedback.

Rebekah is trapped on a deserted island and there are two men trying to kill her. She went to the island with her brother Johnny and now she can’t find him anywhere, so maybe they have already killed him. That’s it really, but the author strings this rather thin storyline out for a very long time, and throws in another missing person case, just to confuse the reader even further.. Sorry to be negative about this book, but it is unnecessarily long and feels as if the author stuck his heroine on a deserted island for no satisfactorily explained reason, made a list of all the terrible things that could happen to her, and chucked them in one by one until the book was full. I felt as if there wasn’t much flow or momentum here, the storyline was fractured, and the changes of voice not always easy to follow or justify. There were some good descriptions of place, and especially good representations of the terrifying weather and the sea, and these went some way towards mitigating the other flaws. Many thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for my review copy.

Sorry to say that I found this book very hard going and it seemed the more that I read the harder the going. Even the lead character, Bek, is two dimensional, in fact all of the characters were "flat". The only character in the whole book with more than two dimensions was Roxie, the dog. I had a really hard time trying to make this in any way a positive review and am sorry that I failed. An Advanced Reader Copy review - free books never buy my opinion!