I read The Chain a few years ago, and it has stuck with me, because the plot was so original. Since then, I’ve pressed the book into several hands because I couldn’t stop thinking about it and wanted to discuss it with others. While The Island lacks the originality of The Chain, the Australian setting sets this book about a family finding themselves on the run from a vengeful family apart from other books like it. This book kept me guessing, and I had a hard time putting it down while reading the last third of the book. If you haven’t read The Chain, I’d definitely recommend it, but The Island is a fast-paced thriller with a satisfying ending.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This reminds me of his last book I read, The Chain, in a good way. Brutal depictions of violence but the premise was not one I read before. Yes, it can be compared to Deliverance and other revenge hillbilly books. I really liked it and the pace is quick! Would definitely recommend. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

I loved THE CHAIN and couldn’t wait to read this one. Tom is a bigshot surgeon, who took his family to Australia where he was speaking at a conference. The two kids want to see koala bears, so he pays a couple of guys to take them over to their island…..where bad things happen. An Australian DELIVERANCE is the best description without giving anything away. A fast read!

Seriously?? It's hard to believe this was written by the author of The Chain... Don't get me wrong, the writing in and of itself is not bad. McKinty has a knack for pulling readers in, even against their will, with fast pacing and gruesome "what if" scenarios - but even when I tried to read it with all sense of plausibility thrown out the window i struggled. The plotline is absolutely ridiculous and it's almost impossible to believe (even for the sake of the narrative) that anyone could be this arrogant and foolish at the same time in the modern world.

This nigh impossibility, coupled with a set of beyond unlikable characters (and I'm talking about the victim/heroes), made for a read that rolled my eyes so far back in my head I'm still not sure my vision is working properly... This felt like one of those '80s horror movies -completely over-the-top (hopefully intentionally) and designed to maximize the creepy meme-supportive factor at the expense of everything else.

Contrast it with The Chain, which was horrifying in its own right but in an utterly believable - even though it really wasn't in hindsight - way that made me cringe and question what I would do in the protagonists' situation even as I prayed to every god I could think of that I'd never find myself there... there's no way I'd find myself on The Island, because I've read a book and watched a movie and read the news in the past 25 years. The utter implausibility of two adults taking their children on to a random island in the middle of the Outback on the word of two strange men they don't know made this a stretch for me from the get-go. Add in the multi-faceted layers of horror that piled on thereafter, and it only compounded my original feelings. I couldn't even suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy this as an insane pastiche. From start to finish this was WAY over the top and didn't work for me at all...

Book: The Island
Author: Adrian McKinty
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Pub Date: May 17, 2022

I hate to say it but I didn’t enjoy this book. I really tried. I didn’t connect with the characters and I didn’t enjoy the dialogue between them. I skimmed it for the most part because to me it became very repetitive. Reviews said it was gripping and pulse pounding….I didn’t find either to be true. I loved The Chain by this author so I had high hopes for this one but it fell flat to me. The plot was predictable and the ending was wrapped up way too neatly.

Thank you Little Brown and Company and NetGalley for this sneak peak! Publication date is May 17, 2022.

It wasn't for me, but it was overall entertaining.

I really liked the premise, and the descriptions were great at building atmosphere and bringing you right in to the environment.

There are a number of sequences that require you to suspend your disbelief. I had issue with a lot of the dialogue, it rang as childish. There were several characters that seemed to just be walking clichés. Somehow the island family is sharp and cunning, but make the stupidest decisions for flimsy reasons.

For me, it felt like a checklist had been made of Scary Situations, then the plot had been arranged to squeeze them all in -- sometimes with quick fix-its, like the author realized the direction it was heading wouldn't work and rather than go back and rework it, they just pivoted and moved on.

The exotic vacation gone wrong is a familiar plot — except this is not about pickpocketing or getting lost or a missing passport or awful weather (or getting COVID and being quarantined for 5 days which would be a contemporary vacation nightmare). In “The Island,” widower Tom and new wife Heather, plus two kids, get into unimaginable trouble in seemingly civilized Australia, and not in the middle of the bush — just 10 miles from Melbourne — on a private island during a naive quest for cuddly things like koalas and jumpy things like kangaroos. It’s a bit like visiting the Western United States and going to Montana and expecting to see antelope playing and bison roaming as you drive around. Sigh. Google “directions to the zoo” dear protagonists. Like in “Deliverance,” the inter-related bad guys speak English and they are terrifying enough to make you forget Australia also has carnivorous crocodiles, giant spiders, venomous snakes, and poisonous cane toads.

Heather, once separated from Tom and trying to protect two almost teen stepchildren (who are still grieving for their late mother) emerges as the one we root for — the suspense was incredible and kept building. From the quarter point on, it was a terrifying chase with fatal consequences if they get caught by the crazies. 5 stars — McKinty has again delivered a memorable thriller that will keep up at night until you finish it.

Thank you to Little Brown and Company and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): YES Heather, the wife, has green eyes and Ivan, the ferryman, has “boozy” green eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO I really can’t comment on what horticulture is in Australia — it seemed as frightening as the big spiders.
There goes a Tesla (in present day books, someone owns an electric vehicle): ALMOST Not a Tesla, but Tom rejects an electric vehicle to go off into the bush. Good idea and bad idea — he had to settle for the car without vehicle collision aversion (which he whines about a lot, considering the plot points).

Thank you NetGalley and the published for a review copy.

This book was a lot of fun to read - full of non-stop action and it was fun to see the MC come into her own and start trusting herself and just how powerful she could be. There was a lot of suspension of belief of course - like, seriously finding the craziest family group in all of Australia but that’s how any horror movie works anyways, so it wasn’t too far out there.

Overall, really great read - you are in for a crazy ride with this one!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Island.

The premise sounded like a thrilling ride, and it was, though the narrative was formulaic with a scoop of Deliverance.

Heather is a young stepmom to Olivia and Owen, and new wife to Tom, a respected doctor.

When the family of four takes a detour to check out koalas on a remote island in Australia (never a good idea!), an accidental hit-and-run leads to a series of horrific events that find Heather fighting for her life, and her young family.

The Island reminds me of those horror/thriller movies where the heroine is underestimated and taken for a silly girl because she's young and beautiful, the bad guys having no idea she's not who she really is.

That's Heather in a nutshell: her childhood was anything but ordinary, but an unorthodox upbringing with military parents have taught her a thing or two about survival skills and weaponry.

Still, there are plenty of moments of disbelief:

Are these island folk really that dumb?

Do they really not know anything about this island, like where the caves are?

They have a drone but not many of them seem to have any tracking skills?

Sometimes, it appears Heather is just lucky.

I liked how Heather's character evolved on the island, realizing she was now responsible for two children, how her bond with the children got better, how they trusted her, especially with that revelation about their dad. I sort of saw it coming.

I read a lot of thrillers/suspense books and I can almost guess when a twist is coming, and what that twist might be.

This was a good read, though I felt the brief chapters about Heather's friend was unnecessary.

This is such an incredible thriller…..I devoured it, and can’t wait for the next exciting novel. I was a huge fan of THE CHAIN, but this latest novel is next level. Bravo!

From the Best Selling Author of The Chain comes a new and explosive new thriller. The Island grabs your attention on page one and doesn’t let up at all.

Heather Baxter is still getting used to being married. A girl from a small island, she moved to Seattle and became a massage therapist. This is where she meets Tom. A doctor whose wife died in a fall down the stairs of their home. He has two kids, Olivia who is fourteen but looks like sixteen, and Owen who is eleven. Oh, they hate Heather. They are rude and spoiled and for some reason, medicated.

When Tom is invited to Australia to speak at a convention of other doctors the kids beg to go and maybe this is what they need to come together as a new family. It is not.

The kids are bored, Heather is sick of them and Tom is sketchy from day one. When someone tells them about Dutch Island, the kids beg to go after being told of all the koalas on the island. But the island is not open for company. There is one ferry that takes people out and back. But only the family who lives on the island. But of course, they all beg to go, and soon a German couple is asking as well.

Shortly after landing, they are told to be back by a specific time. There are no phones or internet on the island and they need to be off the island. But a horrific accident puts them on a collision course with the insane clan who lives there and suddenly Tom is gone and Heather turns into John McClane of Die Hard.

Sick and tired of being underestimated, Heather takes control of the situation in a way that had me wondering if she was secretly CIA! There was so much tension in this book, you could feel the heat and smell the fear.

I loved Heather. They never saw her coming. It was thrilling!

Soon to be a Hulu series.

NetGalley/May 17th, 2022 Little, Brown & Company

This was good! I do think it felt a bit formulaic, quite a bit like the Australian movies it referenced at the beginning of the novel (like Wolf Creek), but not to its detriment. It read in a way that feels very much like it could easily adapt to a movie/TV series. I also read the author's previous novel, The Chain, and they both got the same rating from me. I like both of them (the writing of this one more, the premise of the other more), and I look forward to reading more from Adrian McKinty.

(Maybe it's worth noting, for some reason, this book was titled "The Chase" on my Kindle when it downloaded.)

I was a huge fan of The Chain and had really high hopes for The Island. It did NOT disappoint! When a family vacation veers off course, things turn deadly. Stranded on an island, with no way to contact the outside world, their only hope is to outsmart the inhabitants of the island. I LOVED this book and would highly recommend to anyone who loved The Chain, or just a good thriller.

Heather Baxter is on a work vacation in Australia with her new husband Tom, a widowed Doctor, and his two children. A trip to a secluded island to see the wildlife ends with a tragic accident and the locals are out for blood. No way off the island, no cell service, and a deadly hunt… Heather must use what skills she has to survive the harsh environment and protect her new family.

The Island is a thrilling survival tale set among the harsh Australian bushland. A young woman, Heather, has traveled with her husband and his two teen children to Australia so he can attend a work conference. Heather loves her new husband but is finding her new role as wife and mom a bit difficult as the children don't really like her. The family makes an impulsive decision to hop over to an island with some shady characters...what could go wrong? They have an accident that ends with them trying to survive the harsh environment while running from the locals who are out for blood. This is a "new to me" author and the premise for this novel hooked me however, I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped. One of my main issues was that the characters were very unlikeable which made it difficult to really care about their safety or if they made it out alive. I will warn that there are several graphic depictions of violence (torture, murder, etc.) as well as discussions of rape (including that of a teen girl) that some readers may find disturbing. Although this novel was a bit far-fetched, even for a fictional tale, it was exciting enough to keep me entertained.

A combination of Deliverance and Survivor set in Australia, The Island is a brilliantly deranged tale of fear, family and persistent resistance. Adrian McKinty has delivered another psychological thriller that puts parents in impossibly terrifying situations to see how they would react when the lives of their young children hang in the balance.

Tom is a renowned surgeon who’s invited to speak at a medical conference in Australia and decides to bring his kids and new wife Heather along for a family vacation, hoping quality time together will help the kids warm up to his second wife after the tragic death of their mother. During their travels before his big keynote speech, they take what’s supposed to be a quick sightseeing trip to secretive Dutch Island, only to end up in the middle of a heartbreaking accident. Finding themselves trapped and at the mercy of a secluded, closely-knit local family, they must first bargain for then fight for their lives in an unfamiliar and harsh land. Despite incredibly long odds and step-children who don’t trust her, Heather must summon the courage, cunning and survivalist skills necessary to outwit, outplay and outlast those who will stop at nothing to keep her from ever leaving The Island.

As a big fan of Adrian McKinty’s last book, The Chain, I was eagerly awaiting this hotly anticipated novel. And it didn’t disappoint. In fact, it’s another banger of a thriller. An exhilarating and dire “us vs. them” scenario with seemingly no way out but through the danger. The skills that Heather must bring to bear against the island’s inhabitants are impressive, showing that individuals are capable of great feats when their backs are up against the wall. And the family she is battling…oh boy! They are unscrupulous, mysterious and possibly inbred. Definitely gave me flashbacks to the movie Deliverance. All that was missing was the banjo.

The Island is a fast-paced, fucked-up novel for fans of suspense, horror and witnessing people out of their element adapt and overcome the odds. Adrian McKinty has a second straight hit on his hands and thriller fans are the great beneficiaries.

Hm. I don’t know how I feel about this. I read this SO fast. Like, couldn’t put it down read it in 24 hours. The plot was super entertaining and engrossing. But also, it felt so entirely unrealistic and very contrived. The writing at times seemed super juvenile. I wasn’t really surprised by any of the twists. But yet I still couldn’t stop reading. I think I’m gonna go with 3.5 but that may change to higher or lower after I sleep on it.

The story is about an American family from Seattle that goes to visit Australia for vacation. The family is made up of Tom the dad, Heather the 26 year old girlfriend, 14yo Olive and 12 yo Owen. Olive and Owens mother died a year prior and they are not thrilled with Heather. In search of some wildlife one day, the family convinces a local to take them on their private ferry to their private island to see some
Koalas. While there, Tom accidentally hits and kills a deaf girl on a bike. The private island is made up entirely of one family - the Oneils - and if you watched Ozark at all I just kept picturing Darlene Snell. This family reacts to outsiders killing one of their own the same way I imagine Darlene would - wanting revenge. The rest of the book then is an action packed chase of who will kill who first. I’m not going to say anything else to give anything away, all I can say is I would suggest it for a super intense and fast paced thriller, but don’t expect anything groundbreaking.

After reading and loving THE CHAIN, I was so excited to read THE ISLAND, and it did not disappoint! Heather is married to Tom, a doctor, and to the chagrin of his two kids, much younger. The kids aren't thrilled with their new "mom" and they remind Heather of it every chance they get.

When Tom has to go to Australia for work, Heather suggests making it a family vacation, and that's where things start to go wrong. The kids are bored and restless, and the chance to see native wildlife on a private island is appealing to them. There is a ferry and a guide willing to get them to Dutch Island, but it's usually off-limits to visitors. Money changes hands, and the family is off. The family is involved in a horrifying accident that claims the life of a young woman, and the inhabitants want revenge.

What follows is a tense man vs. man and man vs. nature showdown. I have zero survival skills and am always in awe of those who do. This was one satisfying read with dynamic characters and superb plot pacing. Publishes May 17, 2022, and is slated to be a Hulu mini-series event!

Thank you Net Galley for a digital copy of this book and a chance to read it before release! All opinions are my own. If you like Taylor Adams' Eyeshot or JD Barker's A Caller's Game then this is a probably a book you will you enjoy. This is a very fast paced thriller.
A newly blended family takes a trip to Australia for the father to speak at a medical conference. Desperate to find some Australian adventure, they take a ferry ride to a small remote island hoping to see koalas. Everything is downhill from there! I didn't love the dialogue or the relationships, but that isn't really the purpose of the book. It's a quick and perfect for a vacation read if you are looking for something that's fast, entertaining, and has intense action.

Adrian McKinty knows how to freak readers out while still entertaining them in a bold and adventurous story that is The Island.
The narrative sees a family of four taking a trip to Australia where they’re lured to an island to see the local wildlife. What starts off as an innocent family picnic abruptly goes south when an accident brings the family to the inhabitants of the island, who are keen to get rid of the family for seemingly encroaching on their property. The family quickly gets enveloped in a game of survival in one of the most disturbing and engaging stories yet.
Heather Baxter is a strong and inspirational protagonist who takes front and center stage in this fight for survival as she takes care of her angry and rebellious stepchildren while maneuvering through death traps and violent islanders aiming to do unspeakable horrors to her family. Adrian McKinty wastes no time in setting the perilous stage to deliver the maximum horror in such a situation. Her transformation from a subdued mother to a take-charge and action-oriented warrior is delightful to read. Her emotional turmoil is still preserved, simmering under the surface, brought out at the right moments of emotional reconciliation and rehabilitation.
The essence of chaos runs freely throughout the story, giving off a Mad Max vibe as the action ramps up with scarce ammunition and weaponry, allowing the characters to ration supplies and develop ingenious traps to trap and kill each other.
The Island is a superb thriller to lose yourself in as it jolts you along for a wild and disturbing journey through a terrifying scenario. There aren’t a lot of moments for deep character reflections but that might just be in keeping with the adrenaline-coursing chapters that are guaranteed to be as riveting as they are dark.

Full review will be posted with blurb image on https://www.bestthrillerbooks.com

The Island is a fast-paced thriller that kept me engaged throughout. I was flipping pages quickly to find out what would happen to these characters. At first, I wasn’t sure if I cared much for them, but this book has a lot of character development that I wasn’t expecting. By the end, I definitely did and was invested in their relationships and backstories.

After loving The Chain last year and now loving this one as well, I can’t wait to continue picking up this author’s books. She reliably writes very engaging and action-packed thrillers. I might have liked The Island even more than The Chain because of the unique, secluded island setting. I would definitely recommend this thriller!