Review: WILD DARK SHORE, Charlotte McConaghy

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  This edition read on Kindle (Amazon)
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0DHCXZ7CK
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin eBooks (March 4, 2025)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 359 pages  

Synopsis (Amazon)

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, 18 and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, 17, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; 9-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back towards the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realises Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of heartstopping twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is a story about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us is ending.

 My Take

At the same time as we know that, we hope that, this story is fiction, there is a dreadful feeling of authenticity about it. It certainly raises the severity of the plight that our world is in. And the setting is so close to home. You must come away from the novel feeling that you have learnt something about the tragedy and ferocity of a disappearing world.

My rating: 4.7

About the Author
Charlotte McConaghy is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Wild Dark Shore, Once There Were Wolves, and Migrations, which are being translated into more than twenty languages. She is based in Sydney, Australia.