Title: STRANDED
Author: Sarah Goodwin
Publisher: Avon Books UK
Read: August 2021
Expected publication: 14 September 2021
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
Eight strangers.
One island.
A secret you'd kill to keep.
When eight people arrive on the beautiful but remote Buidseach Island, they are
ready for the challenge of a lifetime: to live alone for one year.
Eighteen months later, a woman is found in an isolated fishing village. She’s
desperate to explain what happened to her: how the group fractured and friends
became enemies; how they did what they must to survive until the boat came to
collect them; how things turned deadly when the boat didn’t come…
But first Maddy must come to terms with the devastating secret that left them
stranded, and her own role in the events that saw eight arrive and only three
leave.
My musings:
For a long time, I was fascinated with the premise
of reality TV shows like Survivor, until I found that they were more about
bitching, backstabbing and forming alliances than actual survival skills and
team work. Apparently this is what viewers like to see – go figure! If you are
like me, and those things bring back all the bad memories about high school and
some workplaces, then you may find this book super stressful to read. If you
were one of the popular group who ruled the courtyard and inspired fear in the
lesser mortals, you may also find it stressful – eventually.
I love how Sarah Goodwin has run
with the theme and explored it all in depth. And be assured, bitching,
backstabbing and forming alliances aside, there is plenty of survival to be had
in STRANDED. It’s all that reality TV promised but never delivered (perhaps
because no ethics committee would ever approve it), and despite biting my nails
to the quick I appreciated the mounting tension and breath-holding levels of
anxiety some of the scenes induced.
In a nutshell, STRANDED explores
what happens when you put eight strangers together on a secluded island and let
them sort out their own pecking order. If it’s one thing that the TV version of
Survivor has shown us, it may not necessarily be the cleverest who win points,
but the ones who can get the majority votes, even if they rule with bullying
and threats. Maddy, with her history of a sheltered childhood, overprotective
parents and home schooling, was never going to be well equipped for this type
of power game, so as soon as she calls out the head bully, her fate is sealed.
And if you think that someone in the group would stick up for the underdog,
then think again – because suddenly Maddy finds herself out in the cold,
fighting for survival. And the wilderness is the least of her problems ...
STRANDED was one of those books that
totally took me by surprise. I was lured by the wilderness setting and found
myself with a gripping, adrenalin-fuelled and tense read that was hard to put
down. At times, it was also immensely frustrating as the voice of reason was
overruled, time and time again. Even though Maddy was perhaps ill equipped for
negotiation and getting her point across, it was easy to see how anyone could
easily end up in her position. And once the die was cast, there was no going
back. “Wow, that escalated fast”, I kept thinking, not realising that much
worse was yet to come.
Summary:
STRANDED is a book that speaks to both our inner
survival instinct as well as addressing the question: “If the world as we knew
it ended tomorrow, how well equipped would you be to survive?” It also
confronts the theme of herd mentality and how easily we fall for power rather
than reason. It’s a LORD OF THE FLIES, adult version, and just as brutal. For
those easily triggered, some scenes may turn your stomach and give you
nightmares, but then the end-of-the-world scenario isn’t ever going to be
pretty either, is it? I loved the background information about all those skills
necessary for survival our ancestors knew but most of us have long un-learned:
foraging, how to grow a crop in the wilderness, how to build a basic shelter
and most of all, how to be part of the natural environment and work with it.
It’s a clever, original and heart-pounding story that will keep me mulling over
some of its themes for a long time to come.
Thank
you to Netgalley and Avon Books UK for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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