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Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is an intense, often gripping novel—but not one I’d personally put in starred-review territory.
The story follows Dominic Salt and his three children, the last caretakers of Shearwater, a remote island near Antarctica that safeguards the world’s largest seed bank. Cut off from the rest of the world and battered by violent storms and rising seas, their fragile existence is upended when a mysterious woman named Rowan washes ashore. Her arrival brings hope, suspicion, and a cascade of unsettling revelations—sabotaged radios, buried grief, long-kept secrets, and a grave that raises more questions than answers.
I’ll be honest: the climate change theme turned me off, and it’s woven deeply into the narrative. That said, once I settled in, I found the book entertaining and often hard to put down. McConaghy is a talented writer, particularly when it comes to atmosphere and tension, and the story delivers plenty of twists to keep readers engaged. The pacing can be uneven, and the romance goes exactly where you think it will, but the suspense carries much of the weight.
Shearwater is loosely based on Macquarie Island, a World Heritage Site in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica—a fascinating, forbidding setting that lingers long after the final page. This is a bleak, storm-lashed read with flaws, but one that still manages to pull you in and hold your attention.