Island Time is a classic. I feel like in 20 years English majors will be writing papers on this book. The language is evocative, the characters sparkling, the whole book is absolutely dazzling. No matter your personality, age, or gender, there is something in this story, in these characters that will speak to you. The whole book feels deeply rich and indulgent, like picking up your favorite classic and discovering why you love it all over again.

I don’t know where to start with this book. I had high hopes for this book but it really fell flat for me. The cover makes it seem like it’s a romance novel, but it really isn’t. I wouldn’t even completely consider it family drama. Each character has their own issues that they work with either with a partner or friend or on their own. Most of the characters are extremely unlikeable, except for a few. One of the redeeming qualities of this book is the growth of Glen Kelly. However both of the Kelly daughters are a huge pass for me. I think my least favorite characters are Matty, Amelia, and Jules Kelly.

A lot of this book is slow and drags, especially when everyone deals with their problems behind closed doors and there’s no communication to solve said problems. This book could have been much shorter.

What I did like was the queer representation in this book. However, Amelia has a relationship in this book where they say I love you around 10 days of being other and then she asks Liss to marry her a few days later which is incredibly fast. Thankfully Liss realizes it’s super fast so they decided to just move in together instead.

Unfortunately this is a book that was just hard to finish for me because I just stopped reading it so many times and ended up skimming a lot of the second half. There were scenes were I slowed down to really read them but the rest I was just getting the general gist of it all.

Hmmmmm...I think I'm let down!

This had all the makings of a summer smash: the cover is gorgeous, the synopsis sounds fun, the setting sounded incredible and this author has past winners.

However - one too many POVs, overly descriptive text - it all just made me feel so bored. Unfortunately this one fell very flat for me.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, it felt like a perfect fit for summer. But I have to say I was left disappointed. The writing style is not for me. Not everything needs an in-depth description. There was also plenty of run on sentences. There were too many POVs; this is marketed as a romance so I expect maybe 2 POVs but I didn’t need POVs from the whole family. Because I couldn’t connect with the writing, I couldn’t connect with the characters either. This book just fell flat for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

BOOK REVIEW

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Island Time by Georgia Clark

This book publishes on June 14th and I would definitely recommend reading it if you haven’t already!

Basically a family takes a vacation on an island in Australia and because of a volcano that erupted while they were there, now they are stranded for 6 weeks 😳 Even though this is a romance novel, I absolutely loved how Georgia Clark included backstory and point of view for all of the family members stranded. I didn’t feel like this was a story about just the main character but instead about the whole family. Definitely unique and engaging!

I wasn’t particularly a fan of the main characters personality. She was very much a pushover, unconfident in her self worth, and jumped WAY too fast into relationships. I realize that people are like that and it just made this story more realistic and unique, but I caught myself rolling my eyes multiple times.

However, definitely a cute love story and put me in the summer/island vibes 🌴

Don’t let that pretty cover fool you…
I was happy to be approved for an ARC of this book as this is an LGBTQIA+ friendly book and I thought one of the many great ways I can celebrate Pride Month would be to read an LGBTQIA+ book. I guess I missed the mark on this choice! 😩

Pros: LGBTQIA+ friendly and history of Aboriginal Australians. That’s it. The star and a half I have given this review go towards those two things and those two things alone.

My issues with this book were numerous, but I’ll list my three biggest peeves.

Cons: The ‘humor’ was awful. There’s a line “as gullible as a virgin in a f**k truck.”
Is that a rape joke???? That sounds like a rape joke to me…Not funny. At all.
The mom in the story fantasizes about killing her husband…wait, I AM reading a romantic comedy, right? Now she’s fantasizing about eating him?? Okay, I AM reading a romantic comedy, right?!?! Another example is the sister using the term “The Help” in a derogatory manner, and no one mentions to her that it’s in bad taste to use that terminology. What message does that send? Oh, and fart jokes aplenty. This humor may be for someone but it definitely isn’t for me! 👎🏻

There aren’t really any antagonists in this story which is shocking considering almost every character in this book were terrible people. I thought the sisters who are supposed to be early 30’s acted like downright children. They were such entitled brats and it didn’t make sense to me that either of these women are supposed to be over the age of 16.

There were nine POVs. NINE! They changed so frequently and without warning. Definitely not the seamless POV transition everyone hopes for. There were over 70 chapters and a lot of them were very long and a lot of side stories could have been chopped to make the story shorter. I just felt like it dragged on constantly.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.

1.5 ⭐️ rounding down. Some reviewers really enjoyed this book so maybe I’m just the outlier here so feel free to check it out for yourself!

3.5 Stars. I loved The Bucket List, so I was excited for another book by Georgia. I also usually love a book with an ensemble cast and multiple pov's, but this book fell a bit flat for me. The scenery was truly gorgeous and I loved the historical aspect about an area of Australia I knew nothing about. However, I just did not really love any of the characters all that much, I don't know why exactly, but no one felt all that relatable to me and I never felt invested. Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the ARC.

A married couple and their families are at the center of this romance when a natural disaster strikes and leaves them stranded while on vacation on an island. How would you like to be stranded with your extended family, secrets out and privacy gone?

I loved Georgia Clark's previous book, It Had to Be You, so I was expecting a similar vibe from this one. I was totally wrong. Although this is lighter in tone and has many perspectives like her previous book, this one has a somewhat silly and has a less believable premise and LOTS of sex. This is definitely a romance and not just a family drama. I liked the couples and found their problems were real and interesting but there were too many characters and problems. I had a little trouble being as interested in all of them. This is a female heavy book, and the men were almost completely just there for the women to act around.

This would be fun for a vacation read but maybe not for more.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

I DNF’d this book after 15%. It was so unbelievably painful to read even that much. The author uses so many adjectives that it reads like a third grader wrote it. There just doesn’t need to be 16 per sentence. Further, the point of view switches between so many characters you cannot get a vibe with any of them. All of them appear to be unhappy and boring, and coupled with the constant switching and aggressive adjective use, I just don’t want to waste my time further.

This took me exactly a month to read. I struggled really hard getting through this book. I feel like it went on forever for no reason. I was very intrigued to begin with because I was not expecting the direction that the book goes in the beginning. It just took forever to get anywhere in this book because of the multiple points of view. I think they’re being so many multiple points of view was very intriguing and a cool concept. But I don’t think we needed that many. There was so many storylines that just didn’t need to be there. Some characters I loved, and some characters I really hated. I would’ve just been happy with a book about Amelia and Liss! I loved their story!

The book was still entertaining and made me laugh a bunch of times! I also wish I had an audiobook of this book so that I could hear all the different accents and really understand how they would be spoken with accents instead of just reading in my head 😂

Overall I think it would make a good summer read! It’s a pretty cool concept and I haven’t read anything like it before!

I was originally drawn into this book by the cover, but I’m not sure the cheery cover fully matched the story. It’s not quite a family drama, but it’s a family with a lot of drama, quirks, and self-discovery. This was the first of Clark’s books for me, and it was also a slow read for me. I enjoyed the setting, and I found myself wanting to know more about many of the characters, but I was able to put this one down and pick it up much later pretty easily. There were so many characters and they all had important and complicated backstories, so I don’t feel like we truly got to know any of them as well as I would have liked. However, the book already felt pretty long, so I’m not sure she could have provided more details on the characters. Without giving anything away, I think it was important to get to know all the characters and how they connect instead of blending some into the background. However, the number of characters meant that the reader doesn’t truly get to know them deeply.

The Kellys family and the Lee family go to a tropical island off the coast of Australia. The only thing that brings these two families together is that their daughters are married. What should have been a long weekend away turned into a six-week-long adventure. On the first night, a volcano offshore erupts causing damage to the area as well as a small tsunami. Due to damage, they were unable to leave the island.

Throughout the book you watch each character evolve and become their true selves. You will get very invested in each character. You will find yourself rooting for them and feeling so great to watch them grow.

As the end grew near and their time on the island was coming to a close I was getting nervous to see how some loose ends would tie together. I was really happy with the outcome but I also wish we could continue to follow these characters after their time on the island. I would love to see how their lives have unfolded.

This is another great summer read!

A big thank you to netgalley & Atria Books for an eARC!

𝕀𝕤𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕚𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕪 𝔾𝕖𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕖 ℂ𝕝𝕒𝕣𝕜 𝕣𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨🎧

✦ ✧ ✦ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✦ ✧ ✦

ℝ𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨

✨I firstly want to thank Netgalley, Atria Books and Georgia Clark for this arc of Island Time. I think this is a really good romance for the summer. The beginning was a bit slow but afterwards it got better. It took a long time for me to finish which can be because of my not finished reading slump. Authors note made me like the book much much more.

✧ ✦ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✦ ✧ ✦

Amelia Kelly is in charge of the family’s summer getaway. Eager to impress everyone including her boyfriend James, she rents luxury beach homes for her own family and the Lees, her sister Matty’s in-laws, on the remote island of Lady Lushington. Here she is hoping for the convergence of her new romance and a chance for everyone to bond and celebrate Matty and Parker’s return to Australia from NYC.

When an unexpected tropical disaster strands the families for six weeks on the island, everyone faces a tough adjustment to their new circumstances. The extended stay also forces issues to the surface in everyone’s relationships including the truth behind Amelia’s relationship with James, Matty’s ambivalence towards impending motherhood, and the state of Jules and Glen Kelly’s marriage.

“Island Time” might just provide everyone with the time to make hard choices and determine the next steps on their life path-in ways they can scarcely imagine.

Although at times the pacing was a bit too slow and the narrative seemed a bit too long, the complex characters and the thought-provoking premise kept me overall engaged.

Island Time is definitely an escapist beach read with intelligence that deserves a place on your summer TBR.

Okay ma’am, Miss Georgia Clark! Stop making me laugh so hard while simultaneously “awww”ing every 5 minutes. I really loved the whole experience of this story. And yes, I think experience is the right word because I was definitely sucked into the family drama and the culture and the gorgeous tropical setting. I tore through it in a few days and that is always the mark of a good book for me!

I’m so thankful to have received this ARC and definitely plan to be recommending this title to friends when it comes out in a few weeks! I’ve already encouraged a few people to read it. I fell in love with so many of the characters… Jarrah and Liss and the dads’ on their secret hunt for the elusive boobook!

The only characters I didn’t feel super connected to were Parker and Matty but that’s probably because I have no interest in entrepreneurship or motherhood… but I know so many people will connect to their storyline!

All in all a sweet, humorous, well-rounded addition to Georgia Clark’s portfolio. Really enjoyed it!

3 Stars

This one is based on a beautiful island in Australia when 2 families are forced together when a natural disaster hits. This one goes back and forth between everyone on the island 8 or 9 POVs in all which was too many for me. It was jumping around often which caused confusion. Overall, it was a fine story and I appreciate that all loose ends tied up, even if it felt rushed.

My favorite character arc was Glen. He had excellent growth and realization and a unlikely friendship.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy!

This books was a big DNF for me. I am a power through reader but could push through anymore on this one.

Some of the issues:
-so many characters! It was easy to get confused and not know who was who or why they mattered.
-25% in and nothing major has happened that has kept me wanting to read more. I feel like I am on a vacation with some extremely boring people.
-what is the point to this story? Which of these characters am I supposed to be focusing on.

Thank you NetGalley, Georgia Clark and Atria books for the ARC. This one just wasn’t for me.

We all know by now that I tend to go into books blind. Somehow, this got me 2 heavy family dramas in a row, so I grabbed this thinking it would be a light summer read. Man, was I wrong. This is another family drama, with a gorgeous setting, and there was a lot going in. It was hard to root for anyone when they all seemed determined to make the worst choices possible. The beginning and end of this book were action packed, but the middle drug a bit. I'm really taking off stars because just the smallest bit of communication would have solved all of these problems. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. I am so conflicted on this book. On one hand, I loved the unabashed queerness and learning about the indigenous people and the wildlife in Australia, but something was just off and slowed the book down for me. I am not sure if there were just too many characters and storylines which it made it a little too messy and difficult to really get into? I’m not sure. Overall, I love Clark’s books and will definitely continue reading them, but this one just wasn’t my favorite.

I requested this after reading and somewhat enjoying IT HAD TO BE YOU by Georgia Clark last year. I really hoped the strong points of that novel would win out here in her second novel and that its weak points would be better, and I think they were, actually: queer representation, fun premise, interlocking storylines. The dialogue was stronger and funnier this time, the characters more distinct and entertaining (though I still found a couple insufferable at times), and the multiple POVs were far less distracting and all over the place than in Clark's previous book. I loved the strong sense of place, escapism, and Australian culture, and the layered intergenerational family relationships.
However, the book was weighed down instead by it not seeming to know what genre it wanting to be in, or what tone it wanted to strike: romcom or family drama or contemporary, with breezy and flirty writing or more serious topics or literary nature writing. I also just had some difficulty buying into the premise of the group being stranded on this island but being essentially unfazed and unaffected by this natural disaster past the (rather unexpected) intense chapters of its occurrence. This adds into the issue of the book not being cohesive in terms of genre/tone.