Review: Death on the Island
Is there anything worse to a bookworm when an anticipated book doesn’t live up to expectations? I love a good mystery and, unfortunately, Death on the Island, the debut novel from Eliza Reid, was not…good. I could see the potential but the execution of the mystery left a lot to be desired.
Here’s the book’s description:
Trapped on a remote island by a howling storm, nine people sit down to dinner.
One of them is about to die.
A group of international players has gathered in a tiny village off the coast of Iceland for a diplomatic dinner. There's Kristján, the mayor reeling from a personal tragedy. Graeme, the ambassador with an agenda to push. Jane, his wife, along for the ride on another one of her husband's many business trips. And several others, from Iceland and from abroad, each with their own reason for being there, their own loyalties and grievances. By the end of the night, one of them will be dead. And it will be up to the ambassador's wife, Jane, to figure out how—and why.
What Jane soon comes to realize is that small communities can be the most dangerous of them all… and no one in their group is safe. With secrets around every corner and violent weather trapping the finite list of suspects together on the island, this locked-room mystery by internationally bestselling author Eliza Reid brings Agatha Christie and Nordic noir together in a brand-new twist.
I don’t love amateur detective stories though I try to keep an open mind. But with this one…I have no idea who was actually supposed to be solving the mystery and sharing that information with the reader. Jane? I guess? There were just so many characters and I didn’t particularly like any of them (which is fine, unlikable characters have their place but I don’t think it was Reid’s intention for me to dislike them all…). They were each getting involved in the murder and I wasn’t sure what storylines I was trying to follow.
While amateur detectives don’t float my boat, I do, however, enjoy locked room mysteries. I like how my brain tries to connect the clues alongside the detective (professional or otherwise). Who had motive? Who had means? Is anyone immediately eliminated from suspicion or are we suspecting everyone? It’s fun. Usually. In this novel, I think there were too many pieces of backstory I had to keep track of and so many of them were red herrings. Sometimes that’s fun. But it just didn’t seem to work for me with this book.
I only kept reading the novel because I had to know who the murderer was. There was enough of a hook there that I was not going to be able to completely set this book aside. The big reveal was a little forced but then…it actually wasn’t the big reveal. There was another element and, I gotta say, that final revelation made me really mad. And I can’t say more because that would totally ruin the ending!
Death on the Island should have been a great read but Eliza Reid’s novel let me down. There may be other readers out there who would enjoy it but I was, sadly, not one of them.
*An egalley was provided by the publisher, Simon & Schuster Canada, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*