Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Eight strangers. One island. A secret you’d kill to keep.
Stranded
What you need to know before your trail
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 she 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…
Travel Guide
Travel to a Scottish Island
Neither of the locations in the novel really exist but there are places where they could be – these are on the map so you can visualize better what these places look like.
Creel
Creel seemed to be a fishing village. Even to call to a village was pushing it; five weatherbeaten houses leaning together around a cobbled square with a concrete ramps down to the sea.
Buidseach isle
The boat to the island leaves from Creel but someone in the novel says it’s not near and even if it was, they would not go there. They don’t know anyone who would risk their boat to the witch…
Booktrailer Review
This book seems to have sailed under the radar since it came out on Sept 15th as some of the big hitters were released that same September day and week. IF you miss his however, you’re missing out. Why?
There’s a remote Scottish island involved
People go for a LOST/Castaway/Survivor kind of TV show experience but it turns out more like Lord of the Flies
The atmosphere is brilliantly evoked!
The social media aspects of the novel tap into our current obsession with this type of show.
Maddy, the main character in the book, has a very unfulfilled life and has been merely existing rather than living since her parents died. She gets selected to join the TV show Stranded along with seven other contestants and two camera people. They will stay there for a whole year with no contact at all from the outside world. They are to wear cameras 24/7 and everything they say and do will be broadcast or at least recorded in some way. After a year, a boat will come and pick them up. Well, that’s the idea. The fact is that the boat fails to arrive…What starts off as a TV show, turns more and more into a world straight out of Lord of the Flies. If you haven’t read that book, just remember that the survival of the fittest’ could be a tagline of the whole novel.
The nature of the writing was good. It’s no spoiler that Maddy survives and that the novel is her telling us her story as well as us learning about the time on the island. The tension is done very well indeed and although I had snacks when reading this, the tension filled my stomach enough to save the snacks for another day.
Atmosphere is really spot on here. It’s a fictional island but you really would not want to go here. Well, not with this lot. The time on the island is evoked and detailed with style and enough tension to fill several buckets. How the contestants interact with each other was really well done. They have to build a shelter, forage for food and live off grid. I loved the idea of this. So did they, apparently until the novelty wore off…
You can tell something is going to go very wrong indeed. The threads start unravelling slowly and you can’t bear to watch. But you do, and the pay off is well worth it.
When I finished reaading, I realized it was a debut. What? I love it even more now. Top thriller right here. If you reality TV, this book will make you think of it very differently indeed!
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Stranded
Destination/location: Scotland Author/guide: Sarah Goodwin Departure Time: 2000s
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