The Island by Heather Graham

While on a camping trip on Calliope Key with her brother and his daughter, Beth Anderson finds a skull in the woods. In order to avoid frightening her niece she hides it, planning to return for it later. There are other groups staying on the island and after talking with them Beth becomes suspicious of their motives for being there. She also becomes worried that the skull she found is tied to the apparent disappearance of a popular couple last seen on their yacht near the island several months ago. When Beth goes back to the woods the skull is gone and she becomes even more fearful of her fellow vacationers.

She's especially wary of Keith Henson, a scuba-diver visiting the island with two friends. Beth finds him attractive, but doesn't quite believe his claim that he and his friends are simply diving for fun. She's also concerned that their yacht seems more expensive than any of them could reasonably afford. Her fears make it impossible for her to relax and she's happy to return to her normal life and her job at the local yacht club. Her calm is disrupted when the people from the island start showing up at the club and mysterious occurrences lead Beth to fear that someone is targeting her. In order to keep herself and her family safe she'll have to figure out if Keith can be trusted to protect her or if he's actually a modern day pirate out to silence her for good.


This book sounded fun. After all, who doesn't love (fictional) pirates? Unfortunately it turned out to be a dud. The characters weren't engaging and the story was very frustrating. Fiction tends to rely on a certain amount of coincidence by necessity, but in this case it was ridiculous. There were only 2 or 3 characters that didn't end up being tied to the big plot in some way and one of them was a 14 year old girl. The crime was also a bit too much. There were simply too many elements for it to be at all believable. I was happy to play along with the sunken treasure and the pirates, but when a missing German weapon from World War II became part of the plot Graham lost me.

All in all this wasn't worth the time it took to read it.

Grade: D+