First I would like to thank Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the advanced audiobook.

Wow! This book. First the setting. It might have been the best setting of a book I have ever read. I loved it so much. The way the author was able to describe the setting was absolutely beautiful and I could picture it in my mind so much.

Second. The story. I was sucked into it from the beginning. The characters, the story, the back story, all of it. It was just so well done.

I will say I think the middle of this book lost me a tiny bit. It got a little slow and maybe a little repetitive but overall it didn’t last long then I was drawn back in.

The narrators were great. I’m a big fan of Saskia Maarleveld and she didn’t disappoint with this book either.

This book made me smile and cry! I loved it.

4.75/5 stars rounded up to 5 for this review.

WOW
The full cast narration was fantastic.
The suspense kept me on my toes
The setting was SO UNIQUE and an entire character by itself
The ending was so sad and I wish It ended differently but I also Understand why it ended the way it did — it was tragically beautiful

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan audio for giving me the opportunity to hear this audiobook in advance if it's publication.

"It is really f***ing sad that it should take loss to know the precise quality of love."
Wow! What a gorgeous, enthralling, immersive book. I think I liked everything about it. Complex characters, evocative setting, well balanced suspense... I'm sure the more I think about it, the longer that list will get. This book was at once poignant, smartly emotional, and timely. I'm so, so glad I read it, and I look forward to recommending it to library customers.

The narration was top notch- everybody did a wonderful job.

my favorite thing about Charlotte McConaghy is that i know i'm going to be learning something new when i read her books. Wild Dark Shore takes place on a fictional remote island near Antarctica. a mysterious woman washes up on this island and is rescued by a small family that seem to be the only people living there.

just about everyone can find something they like in this novel- there is romance, mystery, drama, suspense, and education all mixed into this novel (which also rings true for McConaghy's other books[book:Migrations|42121525] and [book:Once There Were Wolves|54860573].

i got lost in this little fictional island with all of the characters, and that's a win for me. escapism is the ultimate goal when reading in my opinion!

thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

4.5 stars

Wild Dark Shore was my first Charlotte McConaghy work but I definitely will be picking up her previous novels! In this book, we follow Rowan, a woman who washes up on the shore of a research-heavy island inhabited by a family. There are heavy themes of family, love, and environmental protection.

Rowan, Dom, Fen, Raff, and Orly were so well written and felt like real, nuanced people. Their dynamics were believable and complex. The mysteries surrounding Rowan’s arrival to the island felt fully explored and I was satisfied by the ending. Overall this was a great, gripping read!

The audiobook narrators were fantastic - I’d highly recommend this novel via audiobook.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for access to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy was an audiobook for me and it’s a 5 ⭐️! The narrators were Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld and Steve West. And they were amazing.
The author captured all of the nuance of a thrilling, mysterious novel that worked perfectly with the narrators execution. I was pulled in not only by the island but this strange, unique family that lived on it. And then a body has washed up from a violent sea which only grew my curiosity. And this is just one of many mysteries that happen in this audiobook. Really well done and can’t wait to see what the author writes next.
Thanks Macmillan Audio via NetGalley.

What a hauntingly beautiful novel. McConaghy masterfully illustrated the beauty and the danger of their environment and bleak circumstances. She has made nature the main character along with the the humans trying to survive and accomplish their task. There are so many complicated choices and personal growth laced throughout that this is a perfect selection for book club discussion. This is hands down the strongest, easiest 5 Star novel I’ve read in a novel. Love and loss are so deep and this story was able to encapsulate it beautifully. Thank you so much NetGalley for the awesome opportunity to listen to the advanced audiobook copy!

Wow. Not at all what I expected. Especially at the end.
What an interesting remote thriller and survival book. We have mystery and suspense, family drama, hidden secrets and many surprises. Interesting and odd characters for the family living on the island still. Some touches on psychological stress as well. A bit of everything put together perfectly.
Great narration and different points of views and timelines. Everything fit together at the end.
Hard to put this one down.

Wild Dark Shore is literary cli-fi with unforgettable characters and an incredible sense of place. Dom Salt and his three children live on the remote island of Shearwater, caring for the world's largest seed bank. The family is trying to save the seeds before rising tides claim the storage facility, and one day a woman, Rowan, washes up on their shores after she is shipwrecked in a terrible storm. There are plenty of secrets that all the characters are keeping from each other, and even as Rowan and the Salt family form close bonds and grow to care for each other, the things they're hiding from each other threaten to tear them apart. This story was completely enthralling and packs a big emotional punch. I can't wait to read McConaghy's backlist. Also, the audiobook is wonderful, with a full cast to read the different characters' viewpoints. Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for a digital audiobook review copy.

My first time reading Charlotte McConaghy and how I loved every moment!!
🌊
A captivating story of a family whose members are facing individual struggles and feeling the far reaching grief of losing their matriarch. Dominic Salt is a widowed father of three who moved his family to Shearwater a remote island near Antarctica. They serve as caretakers on the island which houses a massive seed bank. With the researchers gone the Salts are the sole inhabitants of the island alongside the teeming wildlife. A woman washes ashore clinging to life and despite Dominic’s suspicions the Salts care for her injuries. As Rowan recovers she realizes the radios have been destroyed, so leaving Shearwater may not be as straightforward as she assumed.

The setting stands out as a character itself. The island with its secrets, seals,🦭 whales,🐋 and wild nature everywhere was stunning. The prose struck me with immediate force elegant without being flowery. The compelling plot and flawed characters made this an immersive treasure.

Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, and Steve West were incredible narrators bringing this vivid emotional story to life.

I was hanging on every word!

🌟All the stars!!🌟

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing an Advanced Listening Copy for review.
All opinions are my own.

What in the climate change? More seriously, the latest novel by Ms. McConaghy presents a thriller set on a remote island centered around a scientific research expedition. Also on the island is the caretaker and his family. Nearing the end of the research expedition, a woman washes ashore, and her arrival has the potential to upset the careful balance that the Salt family has established among the island's animal inhabitants, the research, and the secrets they are hiding.

Rowan has come to Shearwater Island seeking what she has lost. Unfortunately, her ship is wrecked. For the first few weeks, Rowan is taken care of by the children of the island’s caretaker, Dominic Salt. As she seeks answers, readers are clued in that she is hiding just as much as the Salt family. There seems to be a significant mystery unraveling, and Dominic and his children hope to keep it under wraps. Additionally, there is a problem with the island, which is gradually disappearing; ocean life washes ashore, and seeds need to be carefully stored and preserved as part of the scientific expedition.

There was a lot happening in this book, and it felt like two entirely different plots converging at various points. The focus on climate change and its effects felt extremely forced. Unfortunately, the buildup to the secrets that Dominic and Rowan were hiding was so focused on that when the reveal finally occurred, it was a huge letdown. The mystery or thrill just wasn’t there. The ending felt incredibly rushed as if everything needed to wrap up neatly, but it was simply too convenient.

The audiobook featured several narrators, which can often benefit the listening experience, but I would have preferred just one narrator. Overall, the novel was just okay in terms of thrill and mystery for me. I may not be the right demographic for it to resonate well.

Wow! This was definitely wild and dark! A bit of a slow narrative in general, but this went several directions I never would have guessed! Some details are a little cringy but this had me intrigued from the very first chapter. Ollie 🥹 and the whales were a few bright spots in the story! Multiple POV’s, each with their own narrator. I enjoyed each of them, though the voice of Dom was so deep that sometimes I couldn’t understand what he was saying. All in all this was very mysterious and entertaining! The end made me emotional 😭 Out 3/4, add to your TBR’s immediately.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for my Advanced Listening Copy.

The author is a master of character and setting, and though the plot can move slower than I normally like, that combination, along with the narrative mystery, makes her stories unable to put down.

Narrated by Cooper Mortlock; Katherine Littrell; Saskia Maarleveld; Steve West, due out March 4!

"Everything will burn, or drown, or starve."

Charlotte McConaghy is an incredibly gifted author. When I reflect on these characters, I feel as though in spite of few memorable physical characteristics, I know their souls.

Dom, after the death of his wife, has moved his family to a tiny island to become caretakers. Parts of the island were built on and used for research, so his children - 18 year old son Raff, 17 year old daughter Fen, and 9 year old son Orly - have spent nearly a decade learning the wonders of nature on and surrounding the island. Raff is enchanted with whale songs, Fen has been absorbed into the island's seal herd, and Orly has stories of the most mysterious and rare seeds. And Dom, continuing to suffer from grief, still talks to the ghost of his wife.

By the time Rowan washes ashore, the island's permafrost has begun to thaw, endangering the island's safe storage of every variety of known seeds. The researchers have all left after the water level rose and flooded their facilities, taking some structures out with the tide.

With Rowan's arrival, while also planning for their departure with as many seeds as they can still save, everyone's expectations and hopes for the future are laid bare.

When faced with the reality of very real climate disasters, optimism seems impossible. And yet, this novel helps me hold on to hope.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an audio ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Suspenseful. Captivating. Tender. Would so repeat
Wow. This book. My first McConaghy and won’t be my last.
This books has everything, and her lyrical writing style just envelopes you from the very beginning of the story.
I wasn’t sure if I was reading a thriller, when a woman shows up almost dead in the water looking for her lost husband. Or a romance with the beautiful relationship between the grieving husband who cares for her when she washes up on the island he and his family inhabit. I would say it is everything. Loved every minute of this beautiful story unfolding and can’t wait to read more from her!
Thank you netgalley!

The story might be great but the audio is so boring and monotone I fell asleep 3 times in the 35% I could get through.

Oh my... Charlotte McConaghy has gone and done it again! Wild Dark Shore is beautiful and haunting and atmospheric and immersive. It is absolute perfection!

Here we have a slow-burn thriller about the catastrophic consequences of climate change. Set on the remote island of Shearwater, between Australia and Antarctica—is a research station where scientists have been studying environmental change. Dominic Salt, the Salt family patriarch, as well as his children, Rolf (18), Fen (17) and Orly(9), are caretakers of the world's largest seed bank, which is now in danger from the rising tides. The researchers have left the island and the Salt family members are making all the necessary preparations prior to the arrival of the ship coming to remove them from the island before the ocean recedes and the island becomes uninhabitable. Suddenly, a woman, Rowan, washes ashore unconscious raising a ridiculous amount of questions and suspicions.

Once again McConaghy has managed to turn the wild atmospheric setting into an integral character in the story and has gifted us with a beautiful novel about love and loss and overcoming tremendous obstacles against unfavorable odds.

A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an ALC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I was granted the audiobook of Wild Dark Shore (having missed requesting the ebook ARC on the NetGalley site - darn it! The blurb was downright intriguing so I requested the audiobook, even though my preference is always to read a book and imagine everything for myself.

A woman is found, almost dead, entangled in the debris on the shore of the remote island of Shearwater, just a tad north of Antarctica.

The freezing waters could have killed her, and the chunks of flesh missing from her side - surely made by some sharp-toothed predator - SHOULD have done her in, but somehow she is rescued by the lone inhabitants of this sinking outpost. They are the lone guardians of millions of seeds gathered from all the plants and trees of the world.

Everyone in this story has a secret - especially the beautiful Rowan.

Dominic Salt, the father of three precocious children, has his own cache of literal skeletons and spooks in the closet.

As the story slowly unfolds, we learn that Rowan's home was destroyed in a flash fire back in Australia. She had come to Shearwater because her frantic messages to her scientist husband, Hank, were never answered. What happened to him? Why did he leave with the job still unfinished?

I have to say: that ending was a disconcerting shocker, but after I thought about it for a while, it made a "mystic" sort of sense. How much are you willing to sacrifice for those you love? There are hints and "foreshadowings" of this throughout the novel. The silent question recurs: what lengths are you willing to go to avenge or save the life of your loved ones?

Once again in a Charlotte McConaghy novel, the wild setting weaves its own frosty personality into this complex, dark tale. It was hard to have to stop listening to this very well dramatized story for mundane needs like sleep and sustenance! The various narrators (Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, and Steve West) did an excellent job of bringing this dark, slow-paced story to life for me.

I highly recommend this - literally - haunting offering from the incomparable Charlotte McConaghy. Many will not like that ending, and i shared that feeling, but I did see a pattern emerging: a magical twist, perhaps, of fate - in turn, suggesting a preordained or supernatural reason as to why Rowan somehow managed to escape death from such a ruthlessly frigid and turbulent ocean..

I highly recommend Wild Dark Shore: the audiobook was very well dramatized and kept me in constant suspense! My thanks to the author, Charlotte McConaghy, her publisher, and NetGalley for an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. 4.5 well deserved stars, rounded back up to a 5, because this story is still haunting me.
(Expected publication date: March 4th, 2025.)

Thank you for an advance copy of this book by an author I have previously enjoyed. The setting is the star in this genre bending story...part thriller, part romance, part sci fi, part historical fiction. We have a family living on a mysterious island all alone, when a woman Rowan washes ashore. Why is she there can she be trusted? Can the family living there? This was a slow burn thriller with other parts mixed in...and the island was a main character as well. I loved this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advanced audibook.

I could not ever do this book justice with my own words. McConaghy's writing is brilliant and detailed, vibrant and consuming. This story broke my heart multiple times and I found myself speechless by the end. This book features love and loss in so many ways that I am filled with both now that it is done. The Salt family and Rowan will be characters that live with me far beyond my time with these amazing narrators.

5/5 is not enough, but it is what I will give. Amazing.