Review featured at www.books-n-kisses.com

2.5 Hearts This was not the book for me. It is not a thriller but more of a mystery. And actually reminded me of those mystery room places you see popping up everywhere except set on an island.

I actually didn’t care who died or who the killer was. To be honest, I skipped over full paragraphs and didn’t lose any info.

I just didn’t care much about this book. Sadly.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you St. Martin's Press, St. Martin's Griffin and Netgalley for this arc. I love a good 'locked room' book and this was a good one. The setting was creepy, and would have wanted to turn around and go right home! I was intrigued with Riley because I could relate to being an awkward girl then being accepted by a group of long-time friends. Maybe more could have been about how hard it is to try to fit in. The characters other than Riley took me a while to get straight who was who, especially because the voices were similar.
The story started out slowly but when the action happened it was a fast read so I raced through it. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4

I can read the most graphic, disturbing horror novels and laugh through it all, but thrillers about people in the middle of nowhere are the real stories that freak me out. When I started this, I was like ugh, I stumbled into YA. I guess you could put it in the Young Adult category because the characters were college students, but overall I’d just call this a good thriller.

The synopsis says about all that can be said: a group of four art students decide to take a trip to collaborate, cut off ties to the outer world and get in tune with their passions. They stumble upon Whisper Island, a tiny island about ten miles off mainland Alaska. They can stay there rent-free for three months, so even though they’re nervous, they leave Tennessee and head west.

All four girls have very different reasons and motives for agreeing to go on this trip, and those reasons are slowly revealed as the book goes on. There are also two other characters, the drug-addicted brother of one of the art students, and the random girl he is sleeping with at the moment, and the reader will learn a bit about them, too.

This was a super quick read, and also a very entertaining one. There was no brilliance to this, but it was great the way it was. I can easily see this being made into a movie (parts of this remind me of the horror movie “Jawbreaker”) but it would have to be tongue-in-cheek. I know there’s a serious undertone to this, but I’m thinking campy like “Heathers”, “Scream” or yes, “Jawbreaker” - I’d definitely watch it! This is a really fun read and I’m happy to give it four stars.

(Thank you to Harper 360, Carissa Ann Lynch, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.)

Truly edge of your seat action thriller! A quick moving story about a trip gone wrong to Alaska told by the perspective of all the characters. One by one they all start turning up dead. Is it one of them? Or a mysterious stranger on the remote island? This book had me hooked and I was definitely shocked at the ending. Thanks to Harper 360 and netgalley for the ARC. Can't wait to read more from this author!

This was an edge of your seat thriller! I did think it had a good mystery. I found myself not really caring for the characters, they all seemed to have secrets. They weren’t very smart and I’m not surprised by what happened.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy

This isolation thriller follows 4 friends - Riley, Sam, Mia, and Scarlett - all recently graduated from art school. They decide to take the summer and vacation together to relax, make art, and figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. Whisper Island - a private island off the Alaskan coast - seems like the perfect getaway. Until people start dying. Between the four girls, Sam's brother, and his girlfriend - that makes six people on the island ... that they know of. Each person has secrets and there's a chance that any of those secrets could have followed them to the island. Or maybe, the killer is closer than they might think.

TW/CW: drug abuse, hazing

The real star of this book for me was the isolation sub-genre and how well Lynch implemented it. I love a good isolation thriller because of the instant tension, suspicion, and questions it poses. Whisper Island is the last island in a archipelago, about 10 miles off the coast of Alaska. The characters are told the whole island is owned by one family but it has been abandoned and used as a vacation rental for years. The girls are brought over to the island by a hired boat but since they plan on staying for 3 months, they plan on using the boat provided to them on the island for trips back to town. Because of this set up, all it takes is for a few things to go wrong and the group is completely cut off in a very believable way. From that point, the tension really ramps up and Lynch does a great job at showing us the characters problem solving, only to be thwarted by the killer. They are basically stuck on the island with only what they initially brought with them and the characters are doing their best to not only survive, but to figure out who is killing them off and why.

The characters, I'll admit, took me a while to warm up to. When I initially read the synopsis on NetGalley, I thought the friendship dynamic was going to be much different. I think in most of these "a group of friends goes on vacation" type of isolation thrillers, the friend group is usually a little older and maybe has fallen out of touch a bit (for example, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley) and thus part of the point of the trip is to reconnect and possibly reconcile. In this case, some of the girls had been friends for a while, but some were newer to the group so the dynamic was a little weird for me. I didn't feel like these people were close enough to vacation on an island together for 3 months. The story does give us a bit of background and shows us how the 4 friends all came to meet in college, but it wasn't enough of a set up for me to believe the initial premise of the book. As we got to see the group work together to survive their situation, I then got to see more of how the friendship group dynamic worked and I became more invested in the characters. I still didn't entirely believe they liked each other enough to go on vacation together, but I could at least understand how the group dynamics would have them ending up on the island. I wish we had gotten either more set up in the beginning or more flashbacks during the plot for further character/group dynamic exploration and explanation. I don't really feel like there was much character development going on but maybe if I had seen more of the 'before' versions of the characters then I could see how the events on the island were changing them.

I really loved the POV choices in this book. Initially, we only get the POV of the original 4 friends, but once we're on the island we get Sam's brother and his girlfriend's POVs as well. I recently read One by One by Ruth Ware and we only got 2 POVs in that book and I made a point in my review that the POV choice by Ware made me discount any of the other characters as viable suspects and that if we had more POVs in that book, the identity of the killer would have been more of a surprise for me. In Whisper Island, we do get the POV of all the characters and it does make for a much more compelling read. All of the characters have their own secrets that may or may not be connected to the events happening on the island. It was a little frustrating in the beginning to have a lot of the chapters have some veiled reference to that secret where a character would say something like "good thing we're having this vacation, I needed to get away from home for my own safety". This, obviously, helped the mysterious aspect of the book because we didn't know which character's secret was the key to figuring out the truth but it was a little too heavy-handed for my personal liking.

This was pretty much a straight up thriller. There was a mystery aspect, but none of the characters really seemed concerned with figuring out the who or why - they just wanted to survive long enough to get off the island. Once the characters got to the island and the bodies started dropping, I had a really fun time reading this. However, it took a bit too long to get there for my liking. They got to the island at about the 20% mark and first body drop was closer to the halfway point. I really like my isolation thrillers to get to the isolation part faster and for those bodies to start dropping pretty quickly (but that is just a personal preference). In most isolation thrillers I've read, there's always a moment when they start to suspect that the killer is one of the people inside the group and a lot of the tension and suspense in those stories comes from that angle. In this case, any time a suspicion was presented that one of the characters might be responsible, it was almost immediately dismissed. But the dismissals, I felt, were very surface level and along the lines of "I would never do that, we're all friends here" and I thought these would be perfect times for the friendship group to show the cracks under the surface but nothing ever came out like that. I needed more drama from these early-20-somethings! I will admit the reveal of who the killer is really got me good. However, the way the ending played out was extremely unsatisfying for me. After some reflection time, I think my main issue with the ending stems from the fact that we didn't get a really good view of this group before the events on the island so, as I said above, I couldn't get a good view of how the characters changed. I didn't have any plot-level issues with the ending and, in a lot of ways, I think it made a lot of sense. I think the ending would have been much more impactful from a character-level perspective if we had gotten to know the characters better and got to see just how much impact the events on the island had on their lives going forward.

Overall, this was a fun read, but there were a number of issues I had that, overall, impacted my enjoyment of the book. I think the isolation elements and POV choices were excellent. However, the character development and group dynamic was really lacking for me and I think if that was dialed in a little better, this could have been a really fantastic read.

Thanks to NetGalley and One More Chapter for the ARC in exchange for review

The Kindle edition was published February 2, 2021 but paperback edition has an expected publication date of November 16, 2021.

Excellent story! Totally engrossing!. Looking forward to reading more by this author! Could not put this down!

I enjoyed this book very much, even though I typically don’t like back & forth chapters with different characters thoughts & actions. This is a twisty, engrossing thriller set in Alaska (hence the title). You don’t know who the killer is till the very end, and when you think you do know, there’s a twist & you’re wrong.

It’s about an introverted young woman who’s life completely changes when she gets involved with a group of 3 other girls, who are very different from her. The story makes you wonder how well do you really know your friends, or anyone, really?

This might be considered a YA book because the main characters are young adults, in school. But, as an “older” adult, I enjoyed this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC of this book in exchange for my truthful opinion. #Netgalley #WhisperIsland

It wasn't what I was expecting and was a little slow for me. I liked the characters though. They were very real and felt like I was reading about real people rather than fictional characters. I would recommend giving it a go.

We’ve all heard it before. A group of friends goes off to an island getaway and not everyone makes it back. While the story is one that’s been done more than once, this author added their own twists and thrills which separated it out from your typical island murder getaway. ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

“There will be many, and then there will be none.”

So reads a journal left on remote Whisper Island, Alaska. An island where art students Scarlett, Riley, Sammy and Mia have planned to spend three months creating multidisciplinary projects. The women have brought more baggage than just suitcases.

Sammy’s troubled brother Rob and his tattooed girlfriend Opal are waiting for them when they arrive. Rob is a recovering drug addict and also, coincidentally, Mia’s ex boyfriend. Hardly a day passes before Rob and Scarlett begin to turn their mutual substance abuse into something more serious. Then the bodies start to pile up. All six have things in their past that make them vulnerable. Is there someone else hiding on Whisper Island? Someone who wants vengeance? Or could the killer be one of them?

Whisper Island is fast paced, suspenseful with many twists and turns. You’ll think you know the identity of the murderer but you’ll be wrong. Set aside an afternoon for this one and enjoy! 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Harper 360 and Carissa Ann Lynch for this ARC.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I really enjoyed this thriller! I loved the various POVs and the mystery of what would happen next kept me guessing all the way until the end! Even the last few pages were a shock to me, and that’s usually hard to find! The choppiness of the writing style really added a dramatic and suspenseful element that made the book so good! Will definitely recommend!

Let me start off by saying, I LOVE books where a group of friends travel to a remote place, something happens and only one (or a few) make it out alive! This book had it all- I loved all the secrets and lies and deceptions. And the truth is, you really don’t know your closest friends as well as you think….

I liked this book. It was suspenseful and held my interest. Good plot line and characters. I recommend this. New author for me and I will read more

Reading Between the Wines book review #96/115 for 2021:
Rating: 3 🍷 🍷 🍷
Book 📱: Whisper Island
Author: Carissa Ann Lynch
Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Mystery & Thrillers
RELEASES on November 16, 2021!!!

Sipping thoughts: I love a good one setting, multiple suspects, multiple killings type of mystery. This is one of those where you know the killer is among them and not only do you have to figure out who the killer is but the motive behind it. Was it Riley-the quiet but mysterious girl, Sam-the girl who invited everyone to the island, Mia- the one who already has a bad past, Scarlett- the druggie, thinks she is better than everyone socialite or the brother, Sammy and his girlfriend, Opal who were not even supposed to be there? The killer was not hard to figure out and eventually the motive was pretty easy to guess as well. I enjoyed the book enough and it reads more like a YA book.

Cheers and thank you to @NetGalley, @Harper360 and @OneMoreChapter for an advanced copy of @WhisperIsland.

#WhisperIsland #Harper360 #OneMoreChapter #NetGalley #advancedreadercopy #ARC #Kindle #Booksofinstagram #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #nicoles_bookcellar #bookworm #bookdragon #booknerd #booklover #bookstagrammer #bookaholic #bookreview #bookreviewer #IHaveNoShelfControl #ReadingBetweenTheWines #fiction #thriller #suspense #mystery #MysteryAndThriller #GeneralFictionAdult

2.5 Stars

With vibes of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie Whisper Island had a wonderful setting for a creepy mystery...a run down house on a desolate island. BUT...If you're gonna write an updated version of an Agatha Christie plot you better make sure it is done exactly right. Unfortunately this book didn't hit its mark and wasn't for me.

Despite having each chapter from a single character's perspective, which I love, they all seemed one dimensional and all were extremely unlikable. I did like the writing style as it made the book an easy read but the pace was a little slow and the action took a long time to come.

I wouldn't take this as a negative review because I would definitely read another book by this author. I have read many of her works and enjoyed them. This one just seemed to be more for the college crowd or could be considered a Young Adult or New Adult version of the Christie classic so with that in mind, I rounded up.

An unbelievable thriller that will keep you entertained. I could not put this book down. The story and characters are well done. This book will not disappoint you!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Whisper Island, was an action packed thriller filled with many plot twists.

The novel alternates between the point of view of Scarlett, Riley, Mia and Sammy. The girls have booked a trip to free their minds from the constant stressors of college. As they are ready to get going Sammy's brother along with his girlfriend end up joining the girls and causing some animosity among the group of friends.

This is just a minor setback in the big scheme of things. As everything they looked forward to comes to a hault when the murders start to occur. Is there a murderer among the group of friends?

This was a thrilling novel that also touched on murder/mystery/horror. Although I do believe it is definitely geared toward a young adult crowd, I thoroughly enjoyed this book myself.

What a freaking page turner. Friends go to what should be an amazing get away together as friends. And then they all start to die. One by one. But it starts to come out they all might have reasons for someone wanting to kill them. So who is it - someone on or off the island? Literally did not see the end coming. At all. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

4.5 Stars

“One by one, members of the group will disappear. There will be many, and then there will be none…”

Being a bit odd and introverted, Riley hasn’t made a lot of friends while in art school. So, when a very outgoing social media “influencer”, Scarlett, offers her the opportunity to lunch with her and her friends, Mia and Sammy, Riley accepts. As their friendships develop, these art students hatch out a plan to take a vacation to Whisper Island to further develop and focus on their art.

Whisper Island is located in Alaska and as far from civilization as one can get. There are no phones, cell service or internet access or other people on this isolated island in the Bering Sea, and the only way to get to the house is via a boat. While the location and lack of distractions appears to be perfect, the girls soon discover the house isn’t what they imagined, and as an added surprise, Sammy’s brother Rob and his girlfriend Opal arrived before them. The girls start second guessing their idea to stay alone on this remote local, especially when it begins to look like there may be more than just the six of them on the island. Someone may have lured them to Whisper Island…someone with sinister intentions…

If you were a fan of the limited TV series Harper’s Island, you will enjoy this fun and thrilling read with a “locked room mystery” vibe! One by one the friends are being picked off, and as you can imagine, the fingers start pointing at each other as their dark secrets are brought out in the open. I’ll not spoil the story by saying anything more! Loved and highly recommend!



**I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book that I received via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own. **