This book was good, but heartbreaking. It's basically a world where all the animals are dying. Our narrator, Franny, is set on followinf terna on their migration south for personal reasons. It was tough to read in some spots, but beautifully written. 4 stars.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy is a powerful read. It is deep, raw and emotional. You will follow Franny Stone on her dangerous journey across the oceans with last of the Arctic terns on their migration and in doing so you will see flashbacks from her past. You will learn how she started this journey and why. There were so many themes at play here - animal extinction/climate change, death, family and you see how they all fit into this viscous cycle. Will Franny break it?

It was a bit confusing at times because of the flashbacks, but that is what ties it all together. I would have liked to have seen move POV from Niall. Their relationship was fascinating. Read this book!

Thank you to NetGalley, Flatiron Books and Charlotte McConaghy for the #gifted #arc.

What an amazing journey this story takes you on!
Franny is a wanderer, never feeling comfortable in her own skin but with the need to follow the last migration of the Arctic Tern. Just when she thinks it's hopeless to find a captain with a ship to make the journey she finds Ennis and his crew of fisherman. Set in the (not too) distant future when global warming has decimated the wildlife populations to extinction, Franny convinces Ennis that by following the Terns they will find the very elusive big fish haul every fisherman is looking for but with the ocean being fished out is nearly impossible to find. It's selfish to make promises she may not be able to keep but it's worth it to her to try because it's something she's promised the love of her life she would do.
Franny is the narrator throughout the novel and the timeline jumps from experiences in her past to the epic journey the crew has embarked on. For me Franny isn't the easiest character to like but I loved her just the same. This story is at times funny and at times heartbreaking. The cast of characters so real you're right there with them at sea and the prose is poetic and enveloping. Plus, this one will make you sit and ponder what you've just read and it packs an emotional wallop! I loved this one and can't recommend it highly enough!

Thank you to the author, Flatiron Books and NetGalley for the ARC ebook to read, review and enjoy.

Migrations is the story of Franny Stone. It's her struggle to find herself, to find her purpose to discover who she is. Or is it an unraveling for the audience of who she is? As Franny keeps who she really is to herself. If you enjoyed The Glass Hotel or Station Eleven this book is told in the same style as Emily St. John Mandel. The narration is the same as those stories. You scramble to keep up as the story glides along without you knowing what lies on the next page. I really enjoyed this story and the ending took me completely by surprise. Would I recommend this to everyone? No, but I would recommend it to those that loved Station Eleven. Thank you to Flatiron Books and Netgalley for my advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

Franny Stone is a disturbed young woman who finds herself in Greenland with the purpose of tracking the Arctic Tern on their final migration. Her journey is part 'Deadliest Catch', part apocalyptic suspense. Global Warming and Human interference have led to a world that is devoid of food and/or habitats for most of the worlds animals. All birds have become extinct, except for the Arctic Tern. Franny forces herself on board a commercial fishing boat, the Saghani, to follow what may be the last migration of these birds. Along the way, we learn that Franny is lost, and this journey may be the only way she can truly find herself.

I could not put this book down! Charlotte McConaghy's writing is so incredibly descriptive that at times I could feel the Arctic cold in my bones. She threads a tale that is full of sadness and loss but is also about hope, self-reflection and redemption.

Thank You to Flatiron Books and NetGalley for this free e-galley.

This is a beautifully written book set in the future in a time when, sadly, humanity has all but destroyed the earth's wildlife. Franny is on a mission to follow what may well be the last migration of the Arctic tern from Greenland to the south. Franny's love for the wild birds drives the narrative, but there is also a sense of the mysterious as her journey and her past unfold. At the end the reader understands another part of why this mission to follow the birds is so vitally important to Franny. This is a heartbreaking novel beautifully told. Let's all hope that the future it depicts does not come to pass and that we can save our environment with its wondrous wild animals in time.

Thank you NetGalley. Migrations is one terrific read. The very best book I’ve read in quite sometime. It’s a big adventure for Fanny who you fall in love with immediately. This story is set in the future where almost all animals have become extinct due to us humans. Fanny decides to follow the Arctic Terns, the only remaining birds who also have the longest migration pattern - Arctic to Antarctica and back again. Her reasons are ones I’m not going to reveal because I want other readers to be as surprised as I was. I would recommend this book over and over again to anyone and everyone !!

Franny Stone is a wanderer and she wanders to Greenland following the last flock of Arctic terns. This is a wonderful story of trying to survive in a way different world than anyone is used to. Franny is a survivor and the things she has gone through is nightmare material. I really enjoyed this book and Franny. I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

This is one of the most difficult reviews I have ever written. That is because Migrations is one of the most powerful and poetic novels I've ever read. It will certainly make it to my top ten list of books for this year. The narrative, character development, and writing style all meshed with me and I found myself so caught up with the story that I could barely come up for air.

Franny Stone has a story to tell and what a story it is. She was born to wander, to migrate the world and leave people and places behind. She finds herself in Greenland and talks the Captain of the Saghnani fishing boat into taking her on board. She tells him she has banded some Arctic Terns and that by following them, they will be led to a great school of fish. This would be a remarkable achievement because at the time this book takes place 80% of wildlife and most fish have disappeared due to toxic waste, climate change, and ecological damage caused by humans.

Franny's life is one of despair and self-destruction. Her only joys are thinking about her husband Niall, to whom she writes scores of letters while on the boat, and her love of wildlife, especially the terns, one of the last surviving birds, Her love for Niall is complete but it doesn't stop her from wandering. As Niall says to her, he will "love her no matter where on earth you are. I want you to be free to be what you are, to go where you want. I don't want you chained to me." He promises to wait for her no matter what. Like the terns, whose nature is to migrate great distances and fly, it is in Franny's nature to roam the earth. She promises to always return to him.

All the characters in the book came alive for me. I felt like I could inhabit their skin and know what they were thinking and feeling. This happened gradually, piece by piece as each slowly revealed their lives to one another or to themselves. Sometimes, our problems are between our ears and we are psychologically driven to do things without knowing why or consciously choosing. This is one aspect of Franny. Her obsession about what little wildlife that is left and her attraction to Niall feel like an ephemeral mist, a longing that magnetizes her towards what she loves. Niall tells Franny that he is the second love of her life but realizes it would be futile to be jealous of the sea.

As Franny reveals her story to its shattering climax, we are engulfed in her migrations and the migrations of the Terns she loves. Her life and psyche migrate from hope to despair, from inspiration to shame, from travelling to returning, but always driven towards the sea.

If you have a chance to read one book this summer, read this one. It is a miracle of beauty.

A strange, twisted story of a woman who bargains her way onto a ship bound for the Arctic. She convinces the captain to let her stay, and to charter a way to the Antarctic to follow the last of the Arctic terns. The current narrative is interspersed with flashbacks that range from her youth up to months before the story begins. You're often left wondering if we're witnessing madness, or the unraveling of a disturbed, grieving woman.

On the surface this book is about the destructive nature of the human race. In a not so distant (possible) future, most of the world's animals are extinct. But Franny, our main character, is on a quest to track the migration patterns of the last of the Arctic terns. On her journey, she is assisted by a group of fishermen, who try to maintain a living in a world where fish are few and far between. Part adventure story, part mystery, this short novel will keep you engaged throughout.

I greatly enjoyed McConaghy's writing style and the story structure. The plot was engaging, especially the moments where we progressively learn bits and pieces of Franny's past and relationships. There were a few plot twists that I partly saw coming, but there were a few that were genuinely surprising. The ending felt a bit too abrupt for my liking, and a few of the chapter endings were a bit too "cliche", but the story was emotionally captivating and powerful.

Migrations is a compelling, speculative novel perfect for fans of Emily St. John Mandel or Claire Fuller. The novel follows Franny Stone, a woman on a mission to follow what may be the last migration of the world's only remaining colony of Arctic Terns. The birds have the longest migration of any species, from Greenland to Antarctica, and Franny is determined to make the journey with them.

Franny's quest is hardly a typical research trip, however. Alone and unfunded, she solicits a fishing crew to help her follow the birds. Charlotte McConaghy's novel feels like it could be taking place today, but it is set in an unspecified future when most of the animals in the world have gone extinct, and the desperate fishermen are willing to take a chance that the birds may lead them to one last haul. Environmentalist Franny and the fishing crew initially seem like oil and water, but close quarters force relationships to grow.

The first few chapters of Migrations are a slow burn; there is more to Franny and her mission than she is letting on and McConaghy makes her protagonist deliberately opaque at the start of the novel. As events unfold that drastically alter the nature of the crew's journey, Franny is forced to spill more of her secrets and McConaghy uses her bleak, barren future to juxtapose the forces of global and personal loss and grief.

Describing this book in the above summary does not do it justice. There are many themes and threads throughout this book that amazingly come together and raise so many questions. To fully describe what happens, I'm going to discuss this through its multiple genres: science fiction/dystopian, family drama, mystery, and literary fiction.

Science Fiction/Dystopian: the world that Charlotte McConaghy's creates is not society's with government's on the brink of collapse, nor is it a young adult novel with a young girl trying to start a revolution. No. This science-fiction/dystopian novel is one that is a distinct possibility for our own future. Wild places are being taken over. Creatures are slowly dying. There are two distinct scenes/passages that come to my mind immediately. Franny is sailing on a fisherman's ship when they come across a landmass. "We are a plague one the world, my husband often says. Today there is a huge landmass to out left, and it surprises me because there is no land on the chart I've been studying. As we draw close enough to see, I realize that it's an enormous island of plastic, and there are fish and seabirds and seals dead upon its shore" (165). The next scene is in a flashback to when Franny watched a new cast about someone finding a gray wolf, "a lone gray wolf has been discovered and captured in Alaska, amazing scientists who believed them extinct. Authorities were alerted to its existence after it killed a flock of livestock south of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Experts say this behavior only occurred because its own natural habitat and food sources have all perished, but they fail to understand how this solitary creature-a female-could have survived so long undetected and alone" (192). McConaghy's beautiful prose and haunting passages bring to life a future that is horrible and one I hope we can all agree to avoid.

Family Drama: Franny is lost to a family that seems to be cursed never to fully stay in one place. She's also plagued by the loss of her mother, the mother she thought had run away when she was only a child. Her father is someone who was never there for her when she was born or at all during her life. Once she's an adult, she's never stayed in one place nor has she connected to anyone. Franny is someone who lives on the world instead of in it. She still finds love though. Niall Lynch is a professor at a university who is passionate about environmental issues, a passion they both share. But not all is as happy as it would seem. Franny and Niall try to navigate a marriage that is difficult when one person has never had to rely on anyone nor have anyone rely on her. There are more problems going on, something the reader cannot quite figure out, which brings us to the next genre.

Mystery: At the end of chapter two, we are left with this scene. Franny is sitting in an interrogation room at a police station in Galway, Ireland. A detective comes in, "I see it then: the horror she has been working to hide from me. It slides over her eyes like a veil. 'They're dead, Franny.' But I already know that" (34). I'm not going to spoil what happens because it's a main part of the plot and ending. Suffice to say that the mystery is more heartbreaking and horrific in a subtle way than what the reader first thinks. It's definitely not something I saw coming.

The last genre, Literary Fiction: This is what ties all of these together. The themes that come out of the above genres are all tough, important topics that need to be discussed. What are we going to do with the future? With greenhouse gases rising and ice caps melting, there needs to be plans going forward. Psychological problems and family destruction that is a continuous cycle until one person breaks it. Same with climate change, conservation, and entire species dying. Someone has to break the cycle. The other point to make about the literary aspect is that narratively McConaghy has flashbacks throughout the novel. The flashbacks go all the way back to when Franny is a child to just two years before her trip on the Saghani. While I love flashbacks and multiple perspectives, I did have a difficult time with this one, as the flashbacks are in the middle of chapters. The only reason I did demote it the half star was for this.

While the writing was gorgeous, and I bawled like a baby at the end, I will leave everyone with this one remark (that does kind of spoil the ending a bit, but I want to leave everyone with some hope), Franny is the one who breaks the cycle. Maybe not right away. She has to push and fight her way to do so, but she gets there. And she is all the stronger for it.

Taking place in a future where a mass extinction is occurring due to climate change, humans are still clinging on to hope and survival. Franny Stone is tracking the last migration of the Arctic Terns, the last migratory birds, before their inevitable extinction. However, she needs a way to follow them down to the Antarctic from Greenland. She manages to convince Ennis Malone, the Captain of the Saghani, to take her on this journey with promises that the terns will lead his vessel to the last schools of fish available. However, the further they are in the journey, the more the crew realizes that Franny is perhaps not the ornithologist they believe her to be.

This book is more Franny's story than a story about how humans have ravaged the planet and killed most other species that we share the Earth with. The book flashes through multiple points in Franny's life and how she eventually ends up on the Saghani to track the terns. The main points of her life that are flashed back to are 12 years ago when she meets her husband Niall, and 4 years ago when she was imprisoned for committing a double murder. The social issues take a backseat to the emotional journey and the exploration of family, loss, sadness, despair, and despite everything hope and redemption.

While the topic of climate change and the consequences of mass extinction are brought up, I thought any discussion behind it to be very juvenile, simplistic, and suspect. I excused a lot of it because so much of it comes from Franny's internal dialogue or conversations that she's having with others and it's a topic that she fell into rather than something she's really studied herself. It's understandable why Franny would focus more on how devastating it is that climate change is affecting animals and the environment and landscape. Lumping all of humanity as evil for causing the 6th extinction is both true and reductive - glossing over things like environmental and climate justice and the roles of things such as race and class is a quite a privilege. Even when the impact on humanity came up, aside from the loss of industry jobs, it seemed kind of empty of real consequences for humans. If all living creatures died out and the environments and climate changed to the degree of what was written in the book, the people in the book would not be able to be living the lives that they are living. The situation would be beyond dire - a feeling not really conveyed by the book. This disconnect between the character and the rapidly deteriorating world reminds me of Severance by Ling Ma, where the main character headed back to work without fail every day not really noticing the pandemic that basically wiped out everyone in New York City.

This book succeeds on the strength of Franny and her story, which is exceedingly well written. I think anyone who wants to read this book to read about humans dealing with the sixth extinction would be really disappointed. This is a character novel.

3.5/5 rounds to 4/5.

Set in a near future already experiencing a mass extinction, Franny Lynch is a conservationist on a desperate quest to track the last migration of Arctic terns from Greenland to Antarctica. She talks her way aboard a fishing vessel to help her follow the birds, persuading the taciturn captain that the terns will lead them to fish.

When it feels like the world is ending, reading a book about the end of the world might not seem like the most therapeutic choice. This book has a close-cutting, emotionally harrowing trajectory, but it’s filled with compelling characters and big, important, deep themes. If you can hold space for it amidst all the anxiety and upheaval we’re experiencing in the world right now, it will reward you. It is heartbreaking and beautiful, hard but ultimately hopeful, and excellent.

Full review to come in August. Many thanks to Flatiron Books and NetGalley for the eARC.

Franny Stone is a damaged but determined young woman bent on a mission. As the world is losing its wildlife population, Franny fixates on tracking the flight path of the last of the Arctic terns. These are migratory birds that travel from Pole to Pole in annual flights. Barely eking out an existence in Greenland, Franny is determined to get passage on a commercial fishing vessel that will allow her to follow these birds.

But the Arctic terns are not the only migratory birds. Franny is almost one of them as she casts about, in flashbacks, in her personal life in Ireland. She seeks connection but fears it, she wants love but does not want to be constricted by it, she wants to know her past but does not want to become mired in it.

Franny’s shipmates are also running from their landlocked lives to the last fishing grounds and some solace beyond the ocean’s horizons. Initially suspicious of Franny, they come to accept her darkness and her passion. Ultimately, their journey will reveal who they are to themselves and others. An epilogue ties up some loose ends, but the book could easily have stood without that.

This is a haunting, lyrical work that encompasses a love story, flight, mystery and environmental imperatives that drive the narrative. A most unusual future-driven book that will linger in the memory. Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing a thoughtful read.

I wrote about this book on social media and on my blog and on goodreads. The details will be provided directly to the publisher in the next round of this process.

This book was heartwrenching and beautiful. That there could be a time where animals are extinct is devastating. Sadly, if things don't drastically change this will be our reality.
Franny's story is poignant and heartbreaking. Hoping to be loved and yet always feeling like she isn't enough. All of the people in her life leaving her and her constant need to put distance between herself and those she loves. I loved the crows who loved her and brought her gifts. I can't say enough positive things about this book. It has been a long time since I've been so affected by a book. When I finished it I felt almost bereft. This book even for its heartbreaking subject ends up being redemptive. This is a book I won't soon forget. I can't wait to see what's next for Charlotte McConaughey.

**Full review to be posted to Amazon, Goodreads, my blog, and NetGalley closer to pubication!**

Migrations is an incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking story, melancholy at times but also full of hope, I was really pleasantly surprised with this book, as I didn't know quite what to expect. This book feels timely in the best way possible, one that lets you wander along with the main character and wonder what's in store for our own future

I really loved this book. Right from the start, I was sucked into Franny's world and needed to find out what was going on. While the loss of the animals is heartbreaking, unfortunately, it will be a reality. The main character was well written and had such mystery surrounding her. My favorite characters were the crew, especially the captain. The ending was a bit anti-climatic, but it still wrapped up nicely. Great book, well written, and highly recommended.