Tom, Heather and their two children are visiting Australia as a part of a business trip. Desperate to see some native wildlife, the family of four decide to take an off-the-beaten-path tour of an island off the coast. Upon arrival, things quickly go pear-shaped as the foursome find themselves on the run from the island’s armed inhabitants.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills. People are absolutely raving about this one and I just found it.. OK? I mean, this is average stuff bordering on the completely ridiculous – like a computer algorithm wrote a screenplay after having been fed a dozen Liam Neeson action movies. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t succeed in its goal of being a balls-to-the-wall thriller, but this stuff just isn’t for me. I found much of the action too over-the-top, the characters aggressively stupid and annoying with a plot that is certainly predictable to an extent.

I found the novel’s main character of Heather often grated on me. She seemed to constantly jump to conclusions and discover things that I found completely unreasonable based on what she knew and when she knew it. There is a subplot that is revealed later in the novel that has her performing mental gymnastics to justify the reasoning behind her thoughts and actions to the point where I threw up my hands and just said “screw it.”

There is nothing wrong with consuming popcorn fiction whether it is in a book or on the big screen, but I couldn’t really find anything in this one to justify a positive review. This is my second experience with McKinty, and while I thought The Chain was a bit better, I did notice a pattern to his plot pacing in both books. I do not think he is a bad writer in the least, just isn’t putting out work that fits within my wheelhouse.