The premise of this novel hooked me, and the relatively slow pacing throughout felt suited to an insular island life that exists outside of time. It's ultimately romantic to the nth degree, with damning climate-change effects that felt somewhat abrupt. The stormy night Clay Lockhart's wife and children die, he flies into a raging grief, and seemingly as a result of the power of his pain, his home and the land beneath it break from Scotland and float into the sea. When Ellie Mills is a young girl in Nova Scotia, she stumbles onto Clay and his island and upon stepping foot upon its land, enters into a mysterious time warp. But upon her return home her account is largely dismissed as a delusion. She is almost certain that her experience was real, and the pull of the island haunts her into adulthood, so that she constantly feels as though something is missing from her life. Now Clay's island has been spied by a cruise ship of passengers, and everyone is now prepared to believe Ellie's original tale, but she is torn. Can she revisit the strange island from her youth, and does she even want to unravel the secrets of that distant memory and place? Will the mysterious man on the island answer her questions or allow her to enter it, if she can even access that strange place again? And with the oddities of time on the island, would she be giving up her predictable yet comfortable future, years of her life, for merely a visit to that strange land? I appreciated that the floating island and its time warp existed alongside realistic factors here without Earnshaw attempting to explain the circumstances. Why is the island actively drifting around the world? Who knows? Why does it exist within a time vacuum so that those living on it don't age? No clue. It's an invitation to suspend disbelief and roll with it, and I was happy to do so. I don't know why this house and this land broke away from the mainland all those years ago. I don't know why Clay was swept out to sea, and I don't know why I was drawn here as a young girl, why this island has called to me my whole life. I don't know why time moves strangely against its shores. Ellie's lifelong yearning for the island leads her to it again, but upon her arrival she immediately seeks to leave. When she is unable to do so, she doubts whether she should have come at all. This self-doubt and wondering takes up the bulk of the page time in the book, and the pacing of all of this is slow (this does suit the island life, which is unchanging apart from weather-related issues). I didn't mind this extensive navel-gazing for a long while, because Earnshaw's writing is lovely, but ultimately I began to grow somewhat impatient. I was puzzled by a few elements. Clay's intense grief, presumably unprecedented in the world or at least in his part of the world, which was due to the loss of his wife and unborn twins, was powerful to do the impossible: create the island, set it in motion, and form the time warp. Ellie supposes: "Maybe Clay's broken heart severed time, cracked it like an egg. Maybe a man's heart is capable of powerful things." Yet when it comes to Clay and Ellie, his fondness for his wife is clarified as having been simply companionship, not at all a deep love like Ellie and Clay have. Huh. At times I wondered why the main protagonists didn't fear the obvious things that would doom them: loss of the bees (which allowed their garden to grow) to a storm, or sheep to a mishap or illness, or chickens to either of the above. Clay and Ellie's respective "should I, shouldn't I?" internal warring about potential intimacy felt like a luxury--and, ultimately, crises do occur for the couple, who must adjust and face difficult circumstances. The eventual romance and passion were lovely and all-encompassing for the characters. I felt repeatedly surprised that Ellie didn't miss more creature comforts; she mentions only a few aspects of modern life that she wishes for. I also expected at least a few brief grumpy periods in which the two characters bristle at having only each other for company, conversation, entertainment, and stimulation. Because Clay and Ellie and their creatures don't age, they witness a fast-forwarding of climate change. It's a powerful element in the book in that it affects their trajectory around the globe and their landing options and conditions, yet it takes up relatively little page time. Ellie makes some seemingly flippant comments about the hypothetical rejection of everyday life, and it's unclear what alternative she imagines for others; as far as we know, only two people in the world have been able to escape to a timeless island: "I would tell them to burn it all down. So they can build something new. I wasn't the only one dying back there on the mainland. We all were; our lives poisoned by the very things we thought would save us." Earnshaw largely seems to leave this directive and the environment's bleak developments for the reader to contextualize. I was intrigued by the early story, willing to put aside any temporary impatience about the pacing of the middle, then felt that the ending was somewhat abrupt--yet its resolutions were somewhat satisfying. I read a prepublication edition of this novel courtesy of NetGalley and Atria Books. More Books to Explore Shea Ernshaw is also the author of The Wicked Deep, A History of Wild Places, Winterwood, and other titles. Check out these links for Bossy books that play with time, books about island life, and books with Scottish settings.

Davies's slim, luminous, heartbreaking novel sets a story of isolation and human connection against the brutal removal of impoverished citizens from the land in mid-19th century Scotland. He found himself wishing he could go back and start again and do everything differently. But time was the worst thing; time, it seemed to him now, was the only thing you couldn't change; whatever you did, it kept coming. Davies sets her slim, stark, beautiful, and heartrending story Clear  against the backdrop of the Scottish Clearances of the 19th century, in which impoverished citizens were driven off their land. John Ferguson, a minister in need of funds for his new church accepts the job (against the advice of his wife) of evicting Ivar, the sole inhabitant of a remote island off the northern coast of Scotland in 1843. A series of events leads from disaster to recovery, to connection and secrets, to a surprising set of revelations. After a terrible fall on the cliffs of the island, John Ferguson wakes to find himself being tended by a gentle giant in Ivar. Specifically, he is knitting red replacement sleeves for John's ruined coat. The men have no common language, and John, at first fearful of his vulnerability, then overtaken with cowardice, does not attempt to explain why he is present on the island. Instead, John attempts to learn and document Ivar's language and to learn about the island, dreading the day the boat returns to pick him up--and, unbeknownst to Ivar, permanently remove him from the only home he has ever known. The men develop a tender, heartwarming friendship separate from class, background, intellect, and societal expectations. John, at a distance from worries about his congregation and the future of Presbyterianism, as well as from his kind wife, sinks into Ivar's daily rhythm of working on the land, caring for animals, and finding wonder in nature. I have the cliffs and the skerries and the birds. I have the white bill and the round bill and the peaked hill. I have the clear spring water and the rich good pasture that covers the tilted top of the island like a blanket. I have the old black cow and the sweet grass that grows between the rocks, I have my great chair and my sturdy house. I have my spinning wheel and I have the teapot and I have Pegi, and now, amazingly, I have John Ferguson too. This is a slim book that is beautifully balanced between the tension of John's secret, Ivar's misplaced trust (and of the looming time when explanations will be forced) and the paused push of the outside world's pressures, as weather and basic human needs take precedence. Time passes as though in a vacuum, and the men's need for human connection overshadows all else. By the time John's wife appears--fresh from a rough sea journey, inspired to travel by a sense that John was in danger--the resolution feels heartbreaking, heartwarming, and utterly surprising in its generosity and departure from societal norms. I listened to Clear as an audiobook. More about Carys Davies Carys Davies is also the author of the novels West  and The Mission House , as well as two collections of short stories,  Some New Ambush  and  The Redemption of Galen Pike .

In this perfect summer read, Harrison explores 1950s life for three women facing complicated personal challenges. Tennis brings them together, and they use their inner strength and smarts to fight through troubles as they rely on each other. I recently gave a talk about newish books I recommend for spring and summer reading (stay tuned for the full post), and I also mentioned a few great books I was in the process of reading; this was one I was in the middle of and mentioned. Luckily, The Island Club stood up to its entertaining, immersive start and is a great summer read. Nicola Harrison's The Island Club is set in the 1950s on Balboa Island off the coast of California. Tennis ultimately brings together three women, formerly strangers to each other. Their lives intersect in their small community, and they reluctantly become vulnerable with each other, sharing secrets, challenges, and devastating problems they wouldn't tell anyone else. A secret past is revealed, marital troubles are laid bare, and financial devastation becomes clear. The women feel deeply and lean on each other. They're each reeling, but ultimately they realize their resilience; they're clever, determined, and creative with problem-solving. Harrison raises some weighty issues, and there are some dark periods within the story, but the tone of The Island Club is that of a summer book. The Island Club delivers full-on 1950s immersion while exploring LGBTQ issues, privilege, sacrifice, second chances, and redemption. As I was reading, I had faith that all would work out, but that the resolutions would be just tricky enough to make it feel satisfying. The author spoke here last week, and she talked about her inspirations, her writing process, and her life. I loved being there. More Books You Might Love Nicola Harrison is also the author of Montauk, The Show Girl, and Hotel Laguna. For more Bossy reviews of novels set in the 1950s, please check out this link.

Mysteries abound within McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore , but the story is largely an atmospheric story of isolation and loss set against the drama of climate change, tragedy, and finding the will to trust again. The description of Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore  immediately ticked several of my reading-interest boxes--the setting is an isolated island (Antarctica is the closest land mass), the climate is cold (check out these other Bossy reviews of titles with cold settings ), and climate change  and shifting weather patterns are bringing matters to a head. When a mysterious woman washes up half-dead on the remote island of Shearwater, home of the world's largest seed bank and formerly a research hub, she finds only Dominic Salt and his three children manning the lighthouse. The lonely, broken characters reach out to each other. Although hesitant because of past hurts, they begin to form intense bonds. With violent storms on the horizon, no line of communication open with the outside world, and enormous secrets being harbored on all sides, the disjointed group seems doomed to fail each other. But regardless of their interpersonal complications, they may collectively be the only hope of saving the precious, preserved seeds for the future--if they can trust each other long enough to work together for the good of the world. There are mysteries at the center of the story, but for me this was a captivating, atmospheric dive into the pressures, pain, and hope within extreme isolation, the power of external forces, and the push to protect each other at all costs. I was intrigued throughout, as the characters' relationships build to a head (they must reveal the secrets they've kept in trying to save each other; they tentatively become vulnerable with each other; they share difficult truths and dare to imagine a bright future) alongside the relentless, unforgiving weather and storms that seem destined to destroy not only their fragile bodies but the work of lifetimes--as well as the characters' hope for the world in years to come. Wild Dark Shore is both hyperfocused on the nuances of facial expressions, word choice, and interactions as well as vast in its scope, considering climate change's immense effects on the world along with the characters' specific island--as well as the implications of the deadly threat of deterioration of the precious, singular reserves of plant life for generations to come. More about Charlotte McConaghy Charlotte McConaghy is also the author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves .

Isola , based upon the story of a real-life sixteenth-century woman, shifts between details of a life of moneyed ease and an abandonment on an unforgiving, uninhabited island after our main protagonist falls in love with the wrong person. Marguerite is heir to a fortune, but after she is orphaned, she grows into a young lady while her guardian Roberval squanders her inheritance. The unfolding of this continued theft and this absurd man's greedy, gratuitous mishandling of funds--which he legally pursues as a male distantly related to her, ugh--was enough to make my blood boil, but things deteriorate much further from there. As Marguerite enters into her early teens, she begins to fear that her cousin views her as a creepy match for himself. At the very least it becomes clear that he will pay no dowry in order to make another match for her. Instead, in a somewhat shocking turn of events, he forces her to sail with him to New France. But on the way, Marguerite falls for her guardian's servant. When their relationship is discovered, Roberval cruelly punishes them by abandoning them on an uninhabited island to perish. Marguerite, once a privileged, protected child of wealth and opportunity, must learn to survive in the wild. Chapters are preceded by tips from Anne of France to her daughter (from Lessons for My Daughter ) urging constant preservation of reputation, exuding modesty, maintaining a paralyzing fear of making errors, and striving for perfection in the form of delicacy and beauty. These prescribed behaviors suggest a goal of women's disappearing into the background, serving as beautiful, silent, ghostlike creatures. The highly controlled, minutiae-filled advice contrasts more and more starkly with Marguerite's desperate situation on the island and her necessary rejection of even the most basic societal expectations for her status (wearing shoes, using utensils, living a life without work, not developing freckles in the sun, and not dirtying her hands, much less killing, skinning, and processing animals) in order to cling to life. Her slowly deteriorating social and financial standing early in the book gives way to a fascinating, unforgiving stretch of life lived on the rocky island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, bounded in part by Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Labrador Peninsula. As Marguerite taps into her inner strength, she builds a resolve to get home again. But if she is saved and delivered safely back, where will she make her home? How will she secure a future for herself? If her guardian is living, how will she remain safe from him? After a harsh winter, her guardian's ships sail by again, but veer away after spying her. But Marguerite won't give up hope. Now she knows she can see her way through any adversity. I was fascinated by each aspect of this tale, and Goodman transported me into the details and (often infuriating) dynamics of life at the time. Isola  is inspired by the story of the real-life sixteenth-century heroine, Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval. I'd love to hear your Bossy thoughts about this book! I first read Allegra Goodman's work 25 years ago, when I enjoyed her novel Kaaterskill Falls . Since then she has published many more novels, including Sam . I received a prepublication edition of Isola courtesy of Random House and NetGalley.

The gothic story King Nyx offers haunting imagery, sinister mysteries, unreliable memories, resurfacing past trauma, missing persons, unexplained deaths, and a children's fairy tale gone awry. Anna Fort has many reservations about her husband's outlandish theories, but she dutifully assists him with his research into unexplained meteorological phenomena in the hopes that his in-progress book will eventually be publishable--and will allow them to drag themselves out of poverty. Once Charles's family's house maid, Anna knows she is the reason he gave up his inheritance and any relationship with his cruel father. So when a reclusive, wealthy man invites Charles to spend the winter of 1918 on his remote, cold, private island writing his book, Anna is supportive and accompanies him. But a strange feeling pervades everything on the island. Their host is absent, and while they understand being required to isolate and quarantine to prevent the spread of the deadly flu, many odd occurrences and sinister-feeling goings-on are making Anna wonder if they should ever have come--and if it's even possible to escape. Meanwhile, flashes of her past seem to be resurfacing on this strange island, the other couple staying nearby seem to have dark secrets, the rumors they had heard on the mainland of missing young girls seem to possibly be true, someone has turned up dead--and they still haven't even seen their host. The imagery of King Nyx is striking, with (oddly specific and elaborate) automatons, gas masks, looming, mysterious buildings, and more. The tie-in to King Nyx for Anna seems beyond possibility, and the other links to her past seem far-fetched, until she realizes that all of the events on the island seem to be the mastermind of an unhinged puppet master. Meanwhile mysteries from Anna's experiences in the Fort household seem held together by crucial gaps in memory, and the framework is beginning to fall apart. I found myself wishing the various aspects of the story had held together a little more cohesively, but I enjoyed the dark, gothic tale of King Nyx and each of its elements, including the caged-bird metaphors, as well as the denouement. I listened to King Nyx as an audiobook. I received an audiobook version of King Nyx courtesy of NetGalley and RB Media, Recorded Books. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Kirsten Bakis is also the author of Lives of the Monster Dogs, a book I'd like to read.

Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees explores past Turkish-Greek conflicts in a small island community while illustrating the interconnectedness of grief, love, community, and nature in this heartwarming literary fiction story. My friend James and I were recently sharing book recommendations, and he mentioned this author and this book in particular, so I added it to the top of my to-read list. Since her mother Defne went into a coma and never woke up, young loner Ada Kazantzakis has continued to live in London with her distracted botanist father Kostas, who has little brain space for anything but his plants. A fig tree with its own voice and point of view--I loved that there was no explanation, just a plunge into this omniscient, sometimes prickly, often opinionated view--witnessed Kostas's young love with Defne. The fig tree shares the story of the young lovers and while exploring the conflicts between Turkish and Greek characters in the book, also emphasizes the interconnectedness of nature and of humans over the centuries through her ecologically-centered vision of life. Ada is seeking a meaningful link to her past, meanwhile her stranger of an aunt emerges, and with her, the possibility of filling in missing pages of Ada's parents' story--and therefore Ada's own. The fig tree offers the reader much of the material that fills in the blanks: what really occurred between Ada's parents over the years; which factors drove them apart and brought them back together; and the mysteries that swirled around pivotal moments of the past. The ending section is lovely, with heartwarming promise, hope, resolution, and a fig-tree-related revelation that I loved. I listened to The Island of Missing Trees as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Elif Shafak is also the author of There Are Rivers in the Sky, Three Daughters of Eve, The Forty Rules of Love, The Bastard of Istanbul, The Architect's Apprentice, and many other novels.

Conley's book explores a mother's emotional struggle to care for her wild teenage sons and to cope in the wake of her husband's serious accident, all on a tiny island in Maine. Susan Conley's novel Landslide offers a portrait of a family in a remote fishing village in Maine after an accident throws father Kit out of work. Mother Jill is left to take care of her teen sons--they're so wild she thinks of them as "the wolves"--on their tiny island as Kit recovers far away in Nova Scotia. Jill feels utterly alone as she struggles to understand teenaged dramas, to manage brotherly conflict, to attempt to impart life lessons, to impart values related to drugs and sex, and to cope with the boys' dangerous tests of luck and fate. She does all of this in the frequently unforgiving Maine climate on the isolating island where the family has made their home. While facing what feels like disaster after disaster, Jill struggles to give her boys what they need--while navigating complicated emotions, fears about the state of her marriage, and her own persistent, often unmet need to forge an identity separate from that of wife and mother. Much of Landslide consists of Jill trying to keep herself together emotionally while feeling powerless and, often, without a plan. She feels she should make sure her boys and husband feel seen and known, but she's deeply wishing to feel seen and known herself. The atmosphere is sometimes frenetic and frequently claustrophobic, and characters' ineffectual conversations often hit dead ends before they even begin. Characters rely on misdirection and avoidance and offer few straightforward answers, and the resulting frustration and panic made me feel immersed in Jill's unpleasant swirl of doubts, worries, fears, and desperation. Underlying all of the family's stresses is the grim, haunting specter of the imploding fishing business and bleak conditions. These not only complicate Jill and Kit's finances, but threaten Kit's identity and shake the family's sense of personal history and the legacy that's been held by generations. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Conley is also the author of the novels Kelsey Come Home and Paris Was the Place, as well as the memoir The Foremost Good Fortune.

Harding bases his slim historical fiction novel This Other Eden on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine, tipping his eccentric characters farther and farther toward tragedy as mainland men motivated by greed aim to destroy the community. Back in 1792, a formerly enslaved man Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife found a safe haven on an island off the coast of Maine. A century later, the Honeys' descendants and their diverse neighbors--some have escaped from trouble, while others are seeking peace and a simple life--make up a hardscrabble community that must scratch and claw to subsist. Yet they remain on their island, safe from the judgment and danger of the mainland. When a schoolteacher-turned-missionary arrives to educate the island's children, he draws the attention of eugenics-focused authorities, who set out to forcibly evacuate the island. The title of Harding's book comes from Shakespeare's Richard II: This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself The secluded community in the book is like a large family, dependent on only each other, and they are focused on nature and on subsisting independently. The story is inspired by the real-life, formerly integrated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine (in the book it is called Apple Island). One fair-skinned boy is sent to the mainland in an effort to better his circumstances and so that he may take art classes, with his teacher's unspoken hope that he will pass for white, but his past--about which he is guileless--threatens to destroy his future due to others' rash assessments. Harding meanwhile offers a quickly unraveling series of events on the island as government officials impose destructive mainland judgments and values on the island's inhabitants. The story tips its island characters farther and farther toward tragedy, then plunges headfirst into the various heartbreaking consequences of mainland strangers' decisions, cold cruelties, and greedy motivations, culminating in the forceful removal of the peaceful Apple Island inhabitants. Harding's language is beautiful as it evokes the harsh landscape and the characters' connection to the weather, the terrain, and the natural world. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I received an audiobook version of this book courtesy of Libro.fm (Libro.fm supports local bookstores!) and Recorded Books, Inc. The book is wonderfully narrated by Edoardo Ballerini. Paul Harding is also the author of Tinkers.

Kidd's dual-timeline historical fiction, based on actual events, shines in its vivid settings, richly imagined characters, sea voyage details, and magical realism elements. The Night Ship is historical fiction with a magical realism undercurrent that's told in two timelines. I didn't realize up front that this is based upon a true story, and now I'm even more deeply haunted. The Night Ship centers around the dilemmas, conflicts, and discoveries of two characters separated by three centuries: Mayken, a Dutch girl on an ocean voyage who is shipwrecked off the coast of Australia, and Gil, an eccentric Australian boy living three hundred years later on the same island, trying to move past trauma and make a home with his grandfather, a stranger to him. As with Things in Jars, in The Night Ship Kidd offers twists and turns, irresistible protagonists, and vivid setting detail. I absolutely adore Kidd's writing and her gorgeous, evocative settings, her wonderfully imperfect and intriguing characters, her foreboding undercurrents, and her pacing and structure. I was particularly taken with the echoes through time that linked Mayken and Gil--shadowy, dark forces; the scrying stone; their struggles to overcome broken and lost mothers; the way they each literally held in their hands the last remnants of their mothers and considered allowing them to drift away in the wind. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Jess Kidd is the author of Things in Jars, a mystery I gave four Bossy stars--and listed in two Greedy Reading Lists, Six Spooky, Gothic Tales and Six Historical Fiction Mysteries Sure to Intrigue You. Kidd is also the author of Himself and Mr. Flood's Last Resort.