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This was�.fine? I really don’t understand the hype here. The writing is definitely quite lyrical and certainly places the reader in the wild and unrelenting wilderness of the island, it was certainly atmospheric. But all that great setting just couldn’t get me to really feel sucked in by the plot or characters. They felt like the briefest of brush strokes which felt like I was trying to sustain myself on crumbs. The lust to romance subplot felt so random and out of place. I couldn’t understand how the characters got there with so much alleged ~suspicion~ on both sides.

Add to that that I didn’t really get what this was trying to say about environmental conservation or climate change, mental illness, or grief and trauma, and I just feel really meh. This feels like it promises a lot but delivers on very little. The outside world seems to have all these vague issues and plagues of environmental crisis but we don’t know what those are or if they’re even a reality. There’s a lot of talk about ghosts, it seems like mostly as a representation for trauma and loss but given there also those with mental health issues, it’s hard to say.

Overall this was fine but not particularly emotionally or intellectually stimulating or evocative and I found the forced mystery quite boring. Overall my sense is that poor Dom’s kids are committed to putting him in an early grave with their actions. Yes yes I know there’s the whole narcissist and all but I swear their actions were so spectacularly strange to me it boggled my mind a bit.