I am reviewing with my honest opinion in exchange for a ARC of The Island.

I loved this book! I was on the edge of my seat constantly, and couldn’t put it down! The writing style is sharp and ensures the story runs on quickly, nothing drags.

I would recommend this highly to friends and family as a good, high speed read. Highly entertaining!

This has a brilliant premise. It is a page turning thriller.
It is dark and disturbing. The pacing was too slow for me. The ending fell flat for me

Loved this book, really engaging page-turner and I was hooked from page 1. Definitely recommend both this book and this author.

I only see now that this book is going to be made into a television series? Wow, I can't wait to see this thrilling read come alive on the small screen! Really an entertaining and gripping read, will read more in future.

I can’t wait to read the full book after reading this sampler. I absolutely loved The Chain so im expecting such good things from this book.

With thanks to the author, publishers Orion Publishing Group, and NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC of this work in exchange for my honest and unbiased review. This review is not just for this Chapter Sampler, but rather for the full novel which I subsequently borrowed from my local library.

This was a fast-paced and thoroughly enjoyable story of a family's fight for survival! Lured to a remote island with the promise of seeing some of the local wildlife up close in their natural habitat, an unfortunate accident on the island has devastating consequences for the family, and ultimately leads them into a battle to escape the island with their lives!

None of the characters start off being particularly likable, while some parts of the book's premise (a family traveling to a remote island purely at the suggestion of two unsavoury characters, who would do that???) were a bit too far-fetched to be credible. However, those points aside, the action and tension were pretty much non-stop once the story moved to the island, with Heather and the family on the run and trying to escape from the band of locals hunting them down, and I found myself rooting for her and kids more and more as the book went on.

Probably won't be visiting a remote island any time soon after reading this one though!

A good teaser, and I will be reading the book when I get the time to do so. McKinty writes pageturning thrillers.

This book was everything I look for in a book. It was so exciting. The plot was fantastic. It really had me on the edge of my seat, and my heart racing. It was very well written and flowed well.

This preview was a perfect taster for what promises to be an amazing book I am really excited for this book as from what I have read it will be another cracking read.

Who doesn’t love a seriously creepy, heart-pounding thriller to see you through the boiling hot days of summer? I certainly do! I know that Adrian McKinty is known for The Chain, which I haven’t read but I’m very intrigued by the premise of that book. His latest release The Island was genuinely unputdownable for me, so I thoroughly recommend it if you want something that will make you completely forget where you are and what the time is!

When Heather Baxter married Tom, a widowed doctor with two children, she knew that their marriage may well involve some travel. So she’s excited to learn that all four of them will be taking a trip to the Aussie outback where Tom is due to speak at a conference. A boat trip to the remote Dutch Island promises glimpses of koalas but almost as soon as they arrive, it becomes apparent that the island locals really don’t want them there. But after a tragic accident, it becomes apparent that the hunt is on and they won’t be leaving alive.

Like all good thrillers, there were a couple of mysteries running simultaneously and one of them could easily have been forgotten about. I was wary of Tom from the very beginning because the husband/father is always a prime suspect for having done something incredibly dark, even if it’s not related to the main action. There were a few times where Tom’s status as a widower was mentioned and towards the end, it becomes more apparent that the death of his first wife wasn’t exactly as it was reported. So, my suspicions were with him but as he was largely absent from the bulk of the plot, my attention was diverted and I couldn’t quite figure out how or even if he was involved with what was happening on the island.

One of the locals was also having a bit of a crisis of loyalty, simply due to the fact that he wasn’t a true islander. I found Matt a really interesting character who was thoroughly unpredictable and it seemed to be the only island resident with any kind of moral compass. This is a fast-paced thriller, so I understand why we didn’t get a lot of background on the O’Neill family but I think I would have loved it. I wanted to know how they came to be squatters of Dutch Island and why they were as depraved as they were.

There was a touch of Lord of the Flies to the story too and I think it delivered a similar message. The idea that humans are the real monsters and that in extreme situations, that monster comes out is a really powerful one and perhaps puts the O’Neills in a more sympathetic light. Remote islands turn ordinary humans into violent, immoral demons -who knew?

The Island is a very exciting, heart-in-mouth page-turner with a few twists along the way and plenty of drama at the climax. There is some really horrible imagery, so it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted. I found it very easy to put myself right in the terrible action, which is testament to McKinty’s talent but perhaps put pictures in my mind that I simply can’t shake. A must read for lovers of sticky, tight thrillers that won’t quit.

WoW!!!! The Island by Adrian McKinty was Brilliant from start to finish That will have you sitting on the edge of your seat! I loved it. Now that’s what I call a brilliant thriller.

"It was just supposed to be a family vacation.
A terrible accident will change everything.
You don't know what you're capable of until they come for your family"

This book was a roller coaster ride.....So hold tight!!!!

Heather who is an American massage therapist, was making a big change to her life. She was moving from a small country town to Seattle, to marrying Tom, who is a widowed doctor with a young son Owen, twelve, and Olivia, fourteen.

Just a working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.

When they discover remote Dutch Island, off the coast of Victoria and is off-limits to outside visitors. The family just wants to see native wildlife and make their way onto the ferry, Then taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.

As soon as they all set foot on the island, they find out it's run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything around them feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare, that soon begins!.

Heather and her step children are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.

Do they escape and find each other on the other side?

Tom's Children have to trust Heather to survive!

Or will it be too late for them to see each other again as a whole family?

WoW!!!! Hold on Tight.............I highly recommend this book! it was Excellent

Big thank you to NetGalley and especially to Orion Publishing for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest

A fast paced introduction to this book. I defy anyone not to be hooked by the first 5 chapters of this book. Why is a woman trying to creep up on a man on the beneath in the prologue and kill him?

A family is in Australia for the husband;’s Business Conference. On some downtime they head off to a mysterious island to see Koala’s where events take a dramatic turn, with life changing consequences.

Now following this sampler i need to get hold and read the rest of the book to find out what happens.

Looks like another winner from Adrian McKinty.

Very successful opening chapters!! I am keen to read the rest of the book. Based on what I've read so far, I'd say it'll appeal to fans of Stephen King or Karin Slaughter, or anyone who enjoys psychological fiction.

This book was so much fun. If you can call the horrors of being chased through an Australian jungle by a murderous family fun.
It reminded me a little bit of a take The Ruins by Scott Smith. Much much tamer! But it was a great read, especially because even though you wonder how some people could do certain things, you also know you have no idea how you would react in that situation and what you would do!

This was a good read. I read the pre ious book the chain and loved that and I found this to be as good. It goes at a good pace as we follow Heather and Tom who are newly married and his 2 children to Australia who have gone with Tom while he is there for a business meeting and there lives will never be the same after the traumatising holiday.

I read a sample, comprising the first five chapters, of The Island, a new thriller by Irish author Adrian McKinty. While there are some difficulties in assessing the value of the whole based upon a small sample, it seems to have the bones of a compelling psychological thriller in the mould of The Bonfire of the Vanities meets Cape Fear.

The book opens with a tense and frightening scene depicting a woman attempting to sneak up on an armed man, set against the backdrop of an isolated oceanside location.

We then rewind two days. Successful Seattle-based orthopaedic surgeon Tom Baxter (who strikes the reader as somewhat of an entitled twat) is attending a prestigious medical conference in Melbourne, Australia. He's brought with him his new, younger wife, massage therapist Heather, and his two teenage children from his first marriage, 14-year-old Olivia and 12-year-old Owen. Tom's first wife died a year previously, apparently having fallen down stairs while drunk, and the children are still reeling, both reliant on psychotropic pharmaceuticals to help them cope.

During a break in the conference, Tom reluctantly yields to the children's entreaties to take them to see some Australian wildlife, and the family set off in a rented Porsche Cayenne, down Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. This premise struck me as unconvincing from the outset - why would a time-poor American family set out on an aimless two-hour drive in the hope of catching sight of a Koala in bushland, when three of Australia's premier wildlife parks - each of which would guarantee a sighting and maybe even an opportunity to touch - are located within 1.5 hours of their St. Kilda AirBnB?

After a fruitless search for wildlife, the bickering Baxters meet some rather colourful locals at a roadside sausage sizzle (as an Australian, I'm yet to see such a thing myself), and after a significant sum of money changes hands, they're led to a "private island" which we assume is somewhere in the vicinity of Westernport Bay. Heather's already feeling uneasy, but panic descends when a distracted Tom runs over and kills a woman cycling on a rural road. Heather and a concussed Tom are faced with a difficult moral-legal conundrum. Do they report the incident and risk the ire of the parochial islanders, or attempt to escape and report the death once they've regained the safety of mainstream civilisation? The earlier foreshadowing presages the dangerous situation that the family will face.

As an Australian reader, I was immediately struck by a number of cringe-worthy cultural anotropisms contained within the first five chapters. For example, there are no Walmarts in Australia (answers.com gives as an explanation that "[that corporation's] pay, labour hire and business practices are more suitable for a 3rd world country."). Also, while the plural of the word "mate" might be used to describe a group of people, it is never used as part of a greeting in the form "G'day mates!" or similar. While non-antipodean readers might gloss over these and other examples, their presence makes The Island an awkward read for Australians. Perhaps when Adrian McKinty chose to set his new novel in Australia, he should also have employed a cultural sensitivity reader, in order to avoid such glaring mistakes.

Thus, while I appreciate that The Island is based around an interesting plot premise and may well read as an engrossing thriller, my own enjoyment was significantly overshadowed by the frequent lack of attention to factual detail.

Thank you to the author, Adrian McKinty, publisher Orion Publishing Group, and NetGalley (UK) for the opportunity to read and review this title in advance of publication.

I thoroughly enjoyed the last book from this author, so couldn't wait for his next book.
It is an intense thriller.
When a family decides to take a trip on a remote Island to 'see Koalas ' the family who own the Island have told them they have to agree to stay on the road at not to detour.
But an accident soon happens and the whole family have to not just for their lives but have to decides who lives or who dies.


Another gripping and fantastic read.

Loved. Loved. Loved. Holy crap what a wild ride. I was a fan of the first novel The Chain, so I expected to love this one as well. Just 100 times yes. If you want a thriller that is outside of the norm, welcome to your new fave. Great new and different ideas, away from the dumb, alcoholic, female protagonist, I could not have loved this more.

Adrian, I will read and listen to whatever you write. So keep writing these out of the norm thrillers.

5 stars from me. First book was 5 stars as well.

I was such a fan of The Chain that I jumped at a chance to read this one. And it seems night and day to it, I did really like it. Something about it gave me No Exit vibes. Maybe it is the description of violence and the take no prisoners attitude. This is not for the weak of heart as it is intense. It lulls you into a family vacation and turns deadly.

An enthralling sampler that really whets the appetite for the full novel. Fantastic suspense and intrigue as well as the fast pacing mean I can't wait to read the rest! I'm hooked. Thank you to the publisher for the sample.