My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Penguin Michael Joseph UK for the ARC. I'm really not sure about this book. On the one hand it is extremely atmospheric with excellent descriptions which transport the reader to the settings, on the other, well, I felt it was really drawn-out and the various plot strands were very disjointed. Dr Rebekah Murphy is married to Gareth and has 2 young children. Her brother Johnny is an aspiring writer and gets Rebekah to accompany him for the day to Crow Island, 101 miles of the coast in the Atlantic, where he wants to meet with an archaeologist. They travel on which should be the last day of the season before the Island's population abandons the place for 5 months. Through "now" narrative, where Rebekah finds herself alone on this forested and inhospitable island - running for her life from 2 men who mean to kill her, and flashbacks of her thoughts to try and piece together what had, and what is happening to her and where her missing brother is, we follow her heroic efforts of survival. Slowly, though, some things start to fall into place - but nothing could prepare her for the real truth. As Rebekah and Johnny head for the Island, Detective Frank Travis is one week away from retirement from the missing persons' bureau. He still has an outstanding case - Louise Mason disappeared from a hotel reception and was never seen again. Eventually Rebekah and Frank coincide and a conspiracy is indeed revealed, though nothing that could have been imagined. Still not sure about this story, but by all means make your own mind up if you enjoy a good survivalist saga.

I found this book very confusing because of the way Rebekah's story flitted back and forth between her current bleak situation alone on an island and events in her past. It also swaps between her story and that of detective Frank Travis searching for a different woman. I also found the ending convoluted and unsatisfying. New York is such a busy port that surely someone from a cruise or container ship would have quickly seen that she was in trouble if she'd put a big sign up! She was an intelligent woman, a surgeon! Will look out for books in Tim Weaver's David Raker series though, especially as he had a cameo in this one.