Libby PageThe island home

This is the author's third book and it is also the third book of hers I have read. I have loved them all, and this one is no exception.Lorna lives with her daughter in London. She fled there when she was not much older than Ella herself, and has no wish to go back to Kip, the remote Scottish island where she grew up. However, circumstances demand it, so she reluctantly goes back.Alice lives on Kip and loves it. She came from the mainland but she has a good marriage, a lovely daughter and good friends, of all ages.When Lorna and Ella visit Kip, the past and present collide.This is a beautifully written book about love, friendship, forgiveness and community. The author has a wonderful gift of storytelling. I became completely immersed in the Kip community and it made me wish that there was a community like that around me. Yes, everyone knows your business, but everyone is there for each other too.Just lovely.5 stars from me.

I had great memories of reading Libby Page’s previous novel “The Lido” so was really looking forward to “The Island Home“.One of my all-time favorite settings for a novel is the Hebrides, and islands in general have always held a fascination for me. The fictional island of Kip in this novel is an almost idyllic place – a place I would love to live.If I had to say anything negative about this lovely novel is that it was very predictable. However, in this case, I found that I didn’t care. It’s predictability made it comforting and the characters were all so wonderful that I enjoyed the journey with them, despite the fact that very early on I knew how it would all pan out.This is a book with themes of homecoming, regret, forgiveness, hope, belonging, and community. It expounds on how strongly people can be linked to a ‘place’.If you are looking for a feel good novel that also tugs at your heart strings, then this is the book for you. A lovely read that I can highly recommend.

CW: Domestic abuse, child abuse/neglect, miscarriage, cancer, runawaysThe Island Home is the first of Libby Page’s books that I have read, and while it was a quick read, there are a number of things about it that just missed the mark for me.This novel tells the story of Lorna and Jack, two siblings long separated who meet again for their parents’ funeral. The book is separated into two narrators: Lorna, and Jack’s wife, Alice. Sadly, both are in first-person and neither voice is distinctive enough to separate them. I really struggled with who was narrating at times, because they sound so similar.Equally, I felt very ambushed by the amount of characters, their names, descriptions, and relationships, at the start of the novel. There’s simply too many and too much information is dumped onto the reader, especially during the opening scenes on the Island of Kip. I felt drained by the amount of information and two-dimensional characters, and often didn’t really click as to who was who, given I felt that most of them were interchangeable.I did like the island setting once Lorna and her daughter Ella arrived on Kip, and started to explore — Lorna to re-discover her childhood home, and Ella to discover it for the first time. There were moments when I wanted more from the setting, however, and couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Anita Shreve’s masterful Body Surfing (which I vastly prefer).There was a lot of repetitive language and also some turns of phrase that I didn’t appreciate — for instance, the “chubby coffee-coloured cheeks” of one of the babies. BIPOC ask writers not to compare their skin tones to food, because it reinforces the idea of Black and Brown bodies being a commodity, equal to food, and yet here we have it used again. I also noticed a few editorial errors, such as when Alice says of Lorna, “I turn and lead this anxious stranger, my husband’s brother and my daughter’s aunt, into my home.” — this should surely be “my husband’s sister”?! I can’t believe that wasn’t caught in proofing.Overall I felt that this novel was very contrived and predictable, even given the content warnings I’ve given above, and I didn’t feel that some of the heavier subject matter was handled that well. The plot itself didn’t seem to have much charge and you could see the ending from a mile away, which is a shame because I really liked the premise of this book, but sadly it didn’t live up to the hype.I received an e-ARC from the publisher, Orion, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.