Everyone has heard about the success of a certain self-published author recently, those books are everywhere .... and the copy-cat novels, and the debates!On The Island by Tracey Garvis Graves is another success story for self-publishing.
The novel spent a couple of months on the New York Times Bestseller List and has is now being published in the UK by Penguin on 16 August. It has a couple of thousand reviews on Amazon.com ranging from 1 to 5 stars.
I really have been surprised by how much I enjoyed reading On The Island. If I were giving a star rating for pure enjoyment, then it would most definitely be a big fat 5. I am actually going to give it a 4 - purely because at times the writing was a little clunky and disjointed and some of the dialogue grated on me, but that really didn't stop me from immersing myself in the story and enjoying it.
The story is a little bit of Blue Lagoon and a little bit of Castaway, with Anna and TJ finding themselves alone on a deserted island in the Maldives after the pilot of their seaplane has a heart attack and the plane crashes into the sea. Anna is thirty-one, TJ is fifteen - Anna is his tutor for the holidays and they've only met once before.
Once the realisation sets in that they are alone, the pair of them concentrate on surviving and hoping that they will be rescued. It seems that everything that could happen to them, does happen to them. Sharks, storms, illness, and of course the inevitable romance! It takes a while, but as time passes and TJ turns from boy to man, their relationship changes.
This is the perfect summer's day read, by the pool or the beach, or in the garden with a glass of something chilled.
 |
| Tracey Garvis Graves |
My thanks to Real Readers for sending me a copy to review.
Tracey Garvis Graves has a website, you can follow her on Twitter, or visit her Facebook page.
I loved On The Island Anne. I couldn't put it down! Haven't put my review up yet though.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny isn't it, how you can give one star rating based on how much you enjoyed reading a book at the time and another star rating based on objectively how good you think it actually is. I have these dilemmas all the time! I've seen a few interesting reviews for this one now, and never realised she self-published it. Thanks for the review.
ReplyDelete