On July 20, 20— a charter school’s sponsored sail from San Diego to Hawaii hits a reef during a violent storm. Sixteen souls abandon ship. Nine students, along with the hated captain and first mate, wash up on what they believe is a deserted island.Separated into three groups by circumstance and mutual distrust, treachery and death lurks for all. Over the course of a single day, one student … one student betrays all the others. Another drowns. Two others get ambushed by a great white shark. And, like falling dominoes, the captain, first mate, and six students fall prey to a tribe of blood thirsty cannibals.
In the face of almost certain death, who will escape from the isle of savages to tell the tale?
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2.5/5
Such wasted potential.
Isle of Savages was a book I spotted on NetGalley (thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for approving this for me) and the cover and synopsis intrigued me.
Then it all unraveled.
I’m always intrigued and excited for ‘lost islands’ and ‘undiscovered civilizations’ and these types of novels will pull me in almost as much as a horror story set in winter.
The author though fell into an all too familiar territory really quickly. The story itself is a new take on the ‘lost island’ narrative. A group of kids are selected to attend a sailing conference. They all get on a luxury yacht to head to this conference. Unbeknownst to them, the captain is an ex-military man who has devised a plot to sell the kids to human traffickers. But then the boat capsizes and a number of the students as well as the captain end up marooned on an unknown island that just so happens to have an undiscovered tribe of people aka the savages.
Now – to try and limit spoilers – some horrendous stuff happens on the yacht initially. The captain is a tyrant. But, the author glosses over most of the details.
Where this story really failed was the stereotyping of the characters and the back and forth between is this YA or is this extreme horror.
Throughout the entire story, the women are portrayed as weak and only capable of being saved by the male characters. They are, of course, all gorgeous, with one even described as being voluptuous but still gorgeous. As though if a female has a few extra pounds then she’s automatically dog meat. The men are all heavily muscled and the author makes a point of telling us time and time again just how the muscle looks and how each sinewy section glistens. This even extends to the tribe of indigenous people on the island.
I didn’t want to DNF this, because I feel a responsibility of finishing a book I’m kindly approved for on NetGalley, but if this had been anything else, I would have. I would have known exactly how this book ended without reading the ending, and when it concluded I wasn’t surprised.
I really wanted to like this, but it fell into such a pattern of MAN STRONG/WOMAN WEAK that I tuned it out and found myself skimming some dialogue, simply because I didn’t care anymore about hearing how the women wouldn’t survive on their own.
The only saving grace here for the rating was the action was fun and as I said before, this type of tale always catches my interest.
1 star
Oh, this book is too disjointed and I didn’t care for any of the characters. Sorry, it is not for me.
I want to thank NetGalley and MuseItUp Publishing for forwarding to me a copy of this book for me to read and review.
A FREAKING MAZING!
This books was such a wild ride from page one. So many twists and turns that you just can’t figure out what the hell is going to happen next! It was so hard to put down and very, very well written.
I am very picky with the books I read, I know I say that a lot, but it’s true. This book met every single one of my expectations and then some.
With the characters, you either really felt for them, or you held seething hatred for them. It was like the main characters couldn’t seem to catch a break and the villains of the story kept getting a leg up. It was driving me crazy! I was found yelling at my kindle, cursing, clenching my fists, all because this story was so easy to get into! In fact, it was hard NOT to!
This is not a happy story, by any means. There is so much death and destruction and it’s written in great detail. So if you get wigged out easily, this might not be the book for you. Me, I love this kind of stuff. The blood, the gore, the chaos. This book had it all! Definitely 5 our of 5 stars for me!