Lead Review (Isolation Island)

• Book: Isolation Island
• Location: Scotland
• Author: Louise Minchin

Review Author: tripfiction

#Audiobook – narrated by Daphne Kouma.

Welcome to Monk Island, the latest venue for a no-holds-barred reality TV series featuring all kinds of celebrities, from Hollywood royalty to the star of of a long running UK soap, together with elite athletes and Social Media influencers. In the mix is Lauren, who is a lauded documentary maker and she is one of the ten contestants who will be pitting her wits against the others to win a supreme prize. The winnings are tailor-made to reflect each contestant’s abilities and ambitions but as individuals, they are not allowed to share the details with the others.

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Lauren has her own agenda, to wit she is intent on bringing one of her fellow contestants down: she has conducted thorough research and she knows that what she has discovered needs to be brought into the public domain, the misdemeanours she has uncovered are “career derailing acts“. She has been spurred into retributive action because her friend – one of many victims – shared damning details with her and she was horrified that her target’s outer glossy carapace hides a dark, devious and dastardly inner persona.

As soon as the team arrives, they are required to don habits and hair shirts (I made that up, but it would fit the general tone) and find their way into the abandoned, centuries old abbey. As they strive to enter, a portcullis drops unexpectedly and it is a close shave for one of the ‘novices’ and, of course, they start to question what they have let themselves in for. Gruelling tasks await, expulsion from the show will occur on a regular basis; a willingness to be on camera for 24 hours certainly starts to take its toll.

Then a storm hits (of course it does, it’s an isolated island, it is the go-to device for authors with that chosen setting). It is a once-in-a-century event and the novices are left to their own devices – abandoned for want of a better word – because the production company back on the mainland is unable to help them now they are shortly going to be cut off from everything. They will experience utter isolation. Recording ceases. Mayhem ensues. Bodies start to build up.

Setting the thriller on an old monastic island is certainly a novel idea. But I think there were some gaps that went unchallenged, and thus a good plot idea didn’t quite morph into a rounded storyline. Lauren confronts her target but is derailed because the person is clearly a master/mistress of control; this scenario seems unlikely given she has deep and prior knowledge of the person’s modus operandi and is herself a tough cookie when it comes to her career. It felt more like the author had a passion to lay bare a specific kind of behaviour, examine people’s responses to it and highlight the issues. The author also uses a lot of internal dialogue and poses rhetorical questions, which all serve to move the plot along in the designated direction but gets quite repetitive. This device can at times feel quite clunky.

This is readable, with a fairly ridiculous storyline and is another in the long line of locked-room island reality TV show thrillers – there are more titles to choose from on this link. 

Good audiobook narration by Daphne Kouma.

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