Dark Isle (Dark Isle Series #1)
Author: David Longhorn
4 out of 5 stars
Professor Mark Stine is finishing his year as a visiting professor at Cambridge. In hopes of being able to stay for another year, he begins to research ghost story author Monty Summerskill who died in mysterious circumstances in 1916. Mark plans to follow a bicycle holiday Summerskill had taken, where he got a lot of his inspiration, and blog about it. As Mark sets off on his journey, a Detective Sergeant is trying to solve the odd deaths of two students she believes were murdered. And on the island of Skara Farne, ghosts are being seen as something stirs.
I really enjoyed this book. Instead of being outright creepy or scary, this supernatural suspense story has a building dread. There were some editing mistakes which I’ll discuss later, but otherwise, this is a well written book. I was very intrigued about the creature that is revealed to be part of a curse.
There’s a lot of changing point-of-views, which follow the three story lines. Except for a few times with a side character, we mostly see the POV of the main characters, Mark, Jo, and Lucy. Mark is an academic who’s very focused on his work. Jo is a serious but open-minded Detective Sergeant who’s determined to solve the murders. She regularly talks about her findings with her boss who is less open-minded but can’t deny how odd the deaths are. Lucy is a believer in the paranormal and the supernatural. At one point she does a tarot card reading and is shown to see spirits. She lives on Skara Farne and works with Victor who helps her do research. Sometimes jumping POVs like this can make it hard to follow everything, but that wasn’t the case in this book.
The main problem with this book is the editing mistakes. This includes missing letters, like though instead of thought, and the wrong word being used, like with instead of to. One thing that also bugged me is that there’s a section very early in the book where we see the point of view of a young woman named Lucy, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the same Lucy in the rest of the book. It just annoyed me because then I was confused about how she ended up on Skara Farne. If it is the same Lucy, then that should be made more clear. If it’s a different woman then they need different names.
Due to these issues, I’m rating this book 4 out of 5 stars. If you like dark, suspenseful supernatural stories, then you’ll like this book. This book is the first in a trilogy, and there a lot of things left unanswered to entice you to read the next book.
Price through Amazon Kindle: $0
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRQZZL0/
(I do not benefit from the use of this link.)