Cleo Wilder is sent to a remote Irish island by her boss with the assignment of self-coupling on her 30th birthday. She’s spent years searching for her special someone - and writing about it for the magazine. She’s unsure about spending a month alone in Otter Lodge, but when she arrives, learns she’s been double booked with an attractive stranger. Mack Sullivan has arrived on the island to photograph the place he’s heard so much about from his maternal side and wasn’t expecting to have a roomie. Both try valiantly to convince the other to leave and finally settle on a truce - and a few house rules. When their fragile acquaintance turns into friendship with some lust, will Cleo's proposal of a holiday romance be the best idea ever or a set up for more heartbreak?

An interesting read with a twist on the normal romance plot. Half romance, half man and woman figuring out what they really want and need.

4.5⭐

An unexpected love story, Josie Silver's One Night on the Island is as much a testament to the importance of self love as it is a story of romantic love. It's about discovering who we are, how we define what home means to us, and the value of the unbreakable bonds of friendship.

Cleo writes a column for a London magazine in which she goes on dates looking for her "flamingo", her soul mate. Rapidly approaching thirty, Cleo decides to retreat to Salvation, a small island off the coast of Ireland, where she will reflect on her life and marry herself in a self-coupling ceremony, dedicating herself to finding her own happiness and satisfaction in life, with or without a romantic partner.

Mac is an American from Boston, also traveling to Salvation, trying to find the connections to his family's heritage which lie on that small island. Mac is recently separated from his wife, and for nearly a year has been a weekend father to his two boys, a situation which is slowly sucking the life out of him.

Both Cleo and Mac arrive on the island on the same boat, and soon discover that they have been double-booked in the same cabin. With boat service to the island being scheduled once a week at best (unless someone dies), Cleo and Mac find themselves forced to be roommates in the small cabin.

What starts out as a contentious relationship, with both having expected that they would be living alone on the island, soon develops into a cautious friendship, and then into more. But that's where the similarities to other romance novels end. As I was reading I was wondering where the story would end up, hoping that it wouldn't go in a trite and predictable direction, but I also really couldn't figure out how else it could end. Silver ended up giving us a beautiful resolution, which matches the established notes of the story perfectly. Kudos for that.

My one issue with the story, and this may just be a me issue, YMMV. Throughout this entire book, Mac is still legally married. Yes, he and his wife have been separated for nearly a year, and part way through the book Mac finds out that his wife has started seeing someone else. But we know he wants to get back together with his wife, to be a family again. That has always been his desire. So this whole love story kind of makes me itchy, even if Mac and Cleo are a perfect couple, a match made in heaven, soul mates, whatever words you want to use to describe them. For me, the fact remains that Cleo knows how much Mac misses his wife and kids, how much he wants to fix his marriage and have his family back, and in my opinion if there was even a hint of a chance that Mac could return to them after this time apart, then she should have let him be. But as I said, that is just my opinion, and it could just as well be argued that Mac and his wife are beyond being "just on a break" and that because his wife is seeing someone new that gives Mac a green light as well.

But overall this is a lovely story which may perhaps prompt the reader to engage in their own bit of self-reflection. Reflection on who we are when we strip away all of the titles with which we bind ourselves to others, titles such as husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter, friend, employee, or any of the dozens of ways that we are tied to others' opinions of us. If we stripped ourselves of all those other relationships, if the only opinion of our life that mattered was our own, would we be satisfied? Happy? Proud of who we are?

I applaud the author for giving us more than your typical romance. It maybe not the story we expect, but it's something more grounded in the realities of life, and I appreciated that very much.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am blown away by this book. The last half I was torn between reading straight through or taking a break because I so badly didn’t want it to end. Not only do we get a self discovery, but also a found family read. I absolutely loved Cleo and Mack’s hostility in the beginning of the book. Both come to the island to reconnect with themselves, one looking for what they truly want and self love, and the other so broken, looking for an escape. The community on Salvation Island was inspiring. I loved Delta and Dolores’s relationship and how each character from the island brought something to the table. Everything tied together so beautifully. Quite a few tears were shed. I really loved this read. Thank you so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review. I can’t wait until for this book to be published so I can hand sell it to everyone.

5 spectacular stars (wish I could give it 10 stars)

For me, this was the perfect book! I loved the setting, loved the premise, loved the characters, and loved how it ended! I almost wish I could read it again, but I need to let it settle a bit. This might become one of those books I read every year! I have given all of Josie Silver’s books 5 stars, but this is my favorite.

I adored the character of Cleo Wilder, she’s a writer for the top women’s magazine in the UK and approaching her 30th birthday. She writes about dating and finding the perfect partner. However, since that hasn’t happened for her, she has a new assignment from her boss. Head to a remote island and self-couple, who needs a life partner at a certain time in life anyway? Cleo isn’t quite sure what all the assignment will entail, but she has time to figure it out, and enjoy some solo time.

The other main character is Mack Sullivan, an American photographer, who is also headed to Salvation Island to have some time alone and do some soul searching, discovering his roots. What neither character realizes is that they are double-booked for the same (one-room) cabin, the Otter Lodge. Neither one of them will budge, both expecting the other to find different accommodations or take the boat back to the mainland.

They bristle in each other’s presence, trying to accomplish their goals while another person is around. They establish some ground rules and one of the things I loved was they got to the point of sharing three things about each other before drifting off to sleep. What a great way to get to know these characters!

We get to know some of the other people on the island and the landscape sounds amazing! Not tropical, but unique, and beautiful. The pub is a natural gathering place as is the community center with a lovely group of women who knit! I just fell in love with the setting and I’m dreaming about finding my own Otter Lodge someday! The characters are so realistic, flawed, and well-drawn. I really felt that I got to know them over the course of the book.

I don’t want to tell you much more, but it’s only January and this one will be a favorite of 2022. I thought it wrapped up in a realistic way and these characters will stay in my heart!

I really liked One Say in December so I was ready looking forward to this and I absolutely loved it! The story is great and what a place to meet in Salvation. This book goes from laughing to crying and then rinse and repeat. It was a roller coaster that I didn’t want to end. Overal this was a fantastic book and I’m prepared to book a trip to Salvation today!

This book got a little too, to use a technical term, schmoopy for me. The characters are engaging enough to begin with, but as the story progresses each of them gets more and more wrapped up in their own feelings - by way of very flowery language. From the steam level to the quirky townspeople, everything is rather mild. Nothing terrible, just nothing that excels in this version of these character types and this story type.

Josie Silver understands love. This an amazing and raw romance. Sometime's romance novels can feel overly cliche or overdone but this was it's own unique story. Beautifully written.

Loved this sweet sweet story. Learning to love yourself is a very important lesson to learn and this story give the reader so much to think about!

"Life is the stuff that happens in the cracks between your plans and expectations."

Every book by Josie Silver will repeatedly break your heart while simultaneously healing it, and One Night on the Island is no exception. It's a love story between two people in transitional stages of their lives, but also a love story between two individuals with their own lives and a shared place. It's bigger than a love story or romance... it's a journey of self-acceptance and self-love and discovery. It's about falling in love with yourself, falling out of love with the one you thought was your forever, connecting with your past, building a future, and finding your community.

Cleo is a dating columnist from London, about to turn thirty, and still looking for her flamingo. Her boss books her a monthlong solo retreat at a cabin on a remote island off the coast of Ireland where she'll spend time reflecting on her twenties, performing some much needed self-care, and on her thirtieth birthday, perform a "self-coupling" ceremony as a commitment to herself in her search for love and the next step in her career. But before she even gets to the island, she meets Mack on the boat. When they both get to the cabin, they realize that it's been accidently double-booked, and neither of them are willing to back down and leave. Mack is hoping to use his time at the cabin to do some soul searching and get some perspective on his failing marriage, as well as reconnecting with his family's past and ancestry hoping it will reignite his photography. Instantly at odds over who has rights to the cabin, when they realize there is no other option to share it, their animosity seeps into all their interactions. But the more time they reluctantly spend together in the cabin on this remote island, the more they begin to understand each other and form an unbreakable bond.

If you love all the heartbreak and yearning of One Day in December and the "one-bed" trope (which is dialed up to there's only one bed and only one cabin on a remote island with a ferry that only comes once a week if the weather is good), you're going to love this! There's humor between all the heartbreaking and heartwarming moments, but also a lot of heavy moments. Thanks to Random House/Ballantine Books for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

One Night On The Island is a cozy story about love (not only romantic), and belonging. Through Cleo´s and Mack’s POV’s we get to accompany them during their stay in Salvation Island, a trip they had planned but that is turning out to be much more. When they end up in the same cottage, things might change for them forever.
I liked this book because it combines romance, self-discovery and some very fun moments. Throw into the mix some great characters: Cleo and Mack, and some very interesting secondary characters like Delta, Dolores and Raff. The result is a unique story that will warm your heart.
I enjoyed reading it, the romance part and the self-discovery part Cleo was going through and I liked how it also describes Mack’s struggles with how his life is at the moment, it is not a perspective we usually see in stories like this.
Josie Silver has a talent to create stories filled with feelings and that is one of the best things about her writing, besides, as I mentioned, the story it is unique. At first, I thought it would be lighthearted but it actually became deeper, both things have a good balance.
Overall, I highly recommend it. If you have read Josie Silver’s previous books, you cannot miss this one.

“Life is the stuff that happens in the cracks between your plans and expectations.”

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is one of my favorite books and solidified Silver as an auto-buy author for me. Needless to say I went into this one with the highest of expectations. It wasn’t really what I was expecting. Still trying to figure out why this one is called One Night on the Island instead of Many Nights on the Island (hardy har jar). This is less of a romance and much more a story about finding yourself and self-love. Cleo wasn’t my favorite character but she grew on me throughout the book and I really liked her development (though that wedding ceremony really had me cringing). I loved the beginning, enjoyed the end, but the middle dragged a bit. 100 stars for a fantastic setting! Simple island life and appreciating the little things in life. I especially liked the contrast of Cleo’s life in London versus the island (bye bye fake friends). Side characters were great. Mack was okay. I wasn’t really a fan of their romance in general.!

Overall a 3.5 read for me.

❤️BOOK REVIEWS❤️

💕Valentine’s Day just got a little sweeter with these two books being released. I don’t read as much chick lit romance books as I once did, but after reading them I remembered what I loved about them. They are easy, fun, and a great switch up for the serious and scary books I read.

😍What I LIKED about both books:
💕They book take place in Ireland or a small remote Irish island. (I’m a sucker for books that take place in Ireland as I like talking with the accent in my head while I’m reading.🤪)
💕How each book ended!! (Sometimes for me romance has cringe-worthy endings and I thought both of these stayed true to the main characters.
💕The small town feel and community. This provided great supporting characters! 👏👏
💕The amount of romance!! Sometimes in romance books they are humping 🍆 entirely way too much for my liking (I love a great sex scene as much as the next person but once it get overdone, I’m annoyed.)

❤️ONE NIGHT ON THE ISLAND THOUGHTS ❤️
I loved this one as Josie Silver gives us two broken and flawed characters, Cleo and Mac, who are working on themselves. Cleo wants to love herself as she enters her 30s and Mac wants to be a better dad to his boys and find what he can do to get back with his separated wife. These two are thrown into living together (accidental double booking) and it’s the perfect enemies (fighting over the cabin) to lovers.

❤️THE REBOUND THOUGHTS ❤️
Who doesn’t love a childhood friend turned into an absolute smoke show?? When Abby returns to her hometown after losing her job and her fiancé breaking off their engagement she gets a ride back to her childhood home with this ridiculously handsome man, who turns out to be her childhood friend Luke. How the rest unfolds is a up and down rollercoaster ride of emotions for both of our main characters!

RATING FOR BOTH- ❤️❤️❤️❤️

New review😍 have you ever had it where it seems like all the books you read are 5 star books? That’s what’s been happening to me lately and I love it. Josie Silver’s newest book was definitely a 5/5 star book for me and lived up to the hype I had for her third novel, having loved her previous two just as much. This book is about Cleo, an inspiring writer and Mack and photographer who end up both staying at a lodge on a remote island in Ireland. They both travel there for different reasons but both end up finding themselves in the best ways possible. What I loved most about this book was not the romance part of it, which it had for sure, but the self discovery that occurred and the way the author made you feel like you too were taken into the “clan” that makes up Salvation Island. I loved the characters in this story and didn’t want it to end. #onenightontheisland #netgalley

This was a charming, touching and fast reading romance set on a beautiful island in Ireland. I loved the characters, the setting and the conflict of how these characters struggled with moving on and forming a relationship. I especially loved the island..the family of it all, the quaintness of it all. This was a great, book!

Apparently I'm a Josie Silver fan! I've read all 3 of her novels, with "One Night on the Island" being the most recent. This is a sweet read, with a romance that you can see unfolding in the best kind of way: slow slow burn. I think what I loved the most is the unusual ending. It was perfect for both Cleo and Mack but may not be what readers want.

“One cottage. Two strangers. The start of a great love story.”

The beautiful little cottage on a remote island in Ireland is the perfect place for Cleo to celebrate her 30th birthday and spend some much needed time rediscovering and connecting with herself.
Unfortunately, her getaway is also booked for the exact same dates by Mack, who is there to find his roots while he attempts to come to terms with his crumbling marriage.

I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately it fell flat for me. The writing was good overall and I enjoyed the atmosphere of the island, but I never felt any emotional connection with either of the main characters. Cleo’s idea of “marrying yourself,” complete with a big ceremony, was a little cheesy to me. I also really struggled with the fact that Mack was still married and desperately still in love with his wife (and kids)! That simply isn’t the “start of great love story” to me.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for sharing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

It is really unfair to other books being published this year that I read this book so early in the year, because it’s going to be very hard for any book to compare to One Night on the Island. This book is simply brilliant—complicated and lovely and messy and unique, and I can honestly say I loved every piece of it. Gah—I don’t even know what to say about Cleo and Mack, but I was all in for every feeling, every row, every beautiful and visceral image of their connection. The author wraps so many emotions around her characters and the their stories, that my heart was on a roller coaster ride the whole time, leaving me breathless and sometimes in tears. Not to leave out Salvation Island itself, with its beauty and harshness, and with the warmest, most welcoming community—people who take both Mack and Cleo into their homes and hearts, and who wormed their way into my heart as well. I’m truly going to miss the island and the people who call it home—and I’m glad I can re-read this book whenever I want, to go back and spend time with them again.

Josie Silver has a knack for writing contemporary women’s fiction that has both humor and heart. In this novel, those talents are showcased once again.

Ms. Silver sets up her story nicely. Both Cleo and Mack come on a visit to a very small island that has few tourist accommodations. Through an error, each is booked into the very same one room cottage. Neither wants to be the one to compromise or leave and, even if one would, the boats come to the island only weekly. Even worse, someone thought it was a honeymoon that was the reason for the booking. How will these characters work things out? What will evolve in their relationship?

So, the people:

Cleo is about to turn thirty. She is a dating columnist whose love life has not gone to plan. Her editor sends her to the island to make a commitment to herself in a ceremony similar to a marriage. (very Gwyneth Paltrow seeming). Cleo, over the course of the novel, will begin to sort out her future as will Mack.

Mack thinks that he was given the cabin to visit by a relative. He is a photographer who is separated from his wife but not by his choice. Mack has two sons whom he dearly loves. He is looking for some peace and a chance to think about what comes next He has traveled all the way from Boston to do this.

These characters are surrounded by other islanders. They are also in a beautiful locale.

One thing that I liked in the book was the author having each character tell the other three important things most days. Not a bad idea for any couple. There was also some humor and ingenuity around sharing the cabin.

Overall, I liked this novel. It did feel just a bit slow to me at times, however.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

I have really enjoyed the previous books by author Josie Silver and so I was especially eager to dive into one. One Night on the Island follows the story of Mack and Cleo, who both head to a very remote island off the coast of Ireland, looking for some time away and alone. They end up having booked the same place to stay, and on such a small and non-touristy island, the only option is to draw a line across the room and share.

What I struggled with was how quickly their relationship went from detesting each other to loving each other…especially because there were a lot of other issues at play. The transition seemed quick and a little unrealistic to me. But once I got over that, I really did enjoy the storyline.

The details of the island were described so well I almost felt like I was there too. The woven through themes of community, divorce, self-acceptance, and listening to your gut really resonated with me. Besides the believability of how quickly this romance progressed, I really liked this book. I especially loved the ending and recommend adding this one to your winter reading list.

Thank you to Random House and Ballantine Books for my gifted review copy.

Boy meets girl on an island.-great premise but a little too full of the typical romance novel tropes for me to enjoy it.