A new Charlotte McConaghy is cause for celebration. Wild Dark Shore is her third novel with the focus on environmental issues and the future of this world that we inhabit. Wrapped up in the usual page turning style that we’ve come to love. Her characters are always slightly flawed but so relatable. Rowan is literally washed onto a remote island between the Antarctic and Tasmania. This isolated site is the locations of a critical seed bank, it is now under pressure from rising seas and government directions as to what must be saved. The guardians of this treasure are a wonderful , but nevertheless damaged family, Dom, Raff, Fen and Olay’, as we get to know them they become increasingly complex web of intrigue and everyone is not telling the complete truth. We become part of their family through McConaghy’s sheer skill of including the reader on their journey. We feel the cold that they feel, the icy water, the inhospitable terrain and the storms that threaten their continued residency. Wonderful to read as we’re in the hands of a great storyteller with a conscience and a deft hand in a compelling plot. Thanks to @netgalley and to Penguin Australia for the opportunity to read and review this advance copy.

Oh my I love this author…her works are amazing, fantastic, gripping, mysterious, famil saga.. spiritual. I loved it. Thank you to the author. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

You’ll fall in love with this picturesque setting! So many glorious animals!

Shearwater Island holds many a secret – Located between the Tasmanian coast of Australia and Antarctica. Home to many rare species of animals. But life on the island is threatened due to climate change and rising sea levels.

Nine years ago, following the death of their mother, Dominic Salt brought his three children to live in Shearwater’s lighthouse. They are caretakers for the island’s Research Facility which houses scientists several months of the year – who are tasked with studying the wildlife, weather, and tides.

During the worst storm the Salt family has ever endured an injured woman named Rowan washes up on the shore. Where did she come from? Shearwater is so remote that she had to have been on her way there. But why? What does she want? She will I pact all their lives.

Wild Dark Shore was bleak, dark, tender, eerie, and mysterious yet there was still happiness and hope for the future to be found even in the direst of times. The main characters were brave, strong, courageous, and heroic and they loved and respected the land and sea as much as they did each other. I am almost certain this was set in the present day but could just as easily taken place slightly in the future.

My main take away after finishing this novel was the enduring strength of the unconditional love, powerful unshakeable bond, and protective instinct that exists between parents and their children. And that everything in nature is not only connected – weather, trees, plants, crops, insects, animals, humans – but dependant on each other to survive and thrive. Mother nature is as glorious and pure as it is unrelenting and destructive. Also, that nowhere on the planet is untouched by the devastating effects of climate change and man-made destruction.

The writing was hauntingly beautiful, captivating, insightful, and hit every emotional beat expertly. It was also deliberately vague, dreamlike, and flowery, which may be too frustrating for some readers. Definitely a mood-based read requiring patience and concentration, but the payoff was 100% worth it. A slow burn – particularly the first half, but the last handful of chapters were tense and fast-paced. There were some exceptional twists sprinkled throughout that left me reeling. And keep those tissues handy, and prepare yourself, because it was a tear-jerker! If you need a good cry, this is the book for you. The narration shifted between Rowan, and the three members of the Salt family, with the youngest child’s (nine-year-old Orly) chapters reciting the evolution of various plants and their importance.

Charlotte McConaghy is a new-to-me Australian author whose backlist I’ll definitely be delving into.

I’d like to thank Netgalley, Penguin Random House Australia, and Charlotte McConaghy for the e-ARC.

Publication Date: 4th March 2025.

Trigger Warnings: [Underage sex with a minor/paedophilia, Animal Cruelty and Mass Death – Seal culling resulting in the near extinction of the elephant seals and royal and king penguins in the 19th century (historical mention but graphic). (hide spoiler)]

This book a love letter to the natural world but also a eulogy for everything we’ve lost and have yet to lose.

This book is fantastic

I feel bereft after finishing Wild Dark Shore, a contender for the novel of the year and even the book of the year, I already know this although it’s only January. It could be a recency bias, but I loved this even more than Migrations, McConnaghy’s first adult novel.

Set on Shearwater, a fictional remote island between Tasmania (not a fictional SE island/state of Australia) and Antarctica, the novel is centred around Dominic Salt and his three children, Raff, 18, Fen, 17 and Orly, 9 years old. Dominic is the caretaker on this island, who’s been raising the children by himself for 9 years since his wife and mother of his children died.

One day, a woman washes up on the island. She’s barely alive, broken and slashed by the water and the rocks. This event doesn’t make sense, no boats are coming that way, so the hows and whys ensue. The four of them take care of Rowan who recovers slowly.

The four people are the last remaining humans on the island, waiting for the rescue boat in a few months. You see, the island is sinking and they're trying to save precious seeds held by the seed bank, that's defrosting and sinking.

McConnagy has created such extraordinary characters. They’re all different, flawed, interesting – hard to forget. Rowan herself is mysterious, obstinate, and lost in more ways than one.

McConnaghy beautifully unpeels the many layers of each character, they’re all dealing with grief and loss, loneliness and desperation. Other important characters are nature, the island, the animals, and the weather. It wouldn’t be a McConnaghy novel if one of the most important themes weren't climate change and its dire consequences.

But among all the realistic gloom and doom, there’s love and hope.

Congratulations and thanks to Charlotte McConaghy for giving us such a beautiful novel.

A must-read novel!

The latest from Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore (releasing March 2024) is a mix of family drama and climate fiction, as are her 2 previous books (Migrations, Once There Were Wolves).
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Set on a remote island, the Salt family are the caretakers who maintain a research station and a storage facility with seeds of every species of tree that exists. With rising seas and climate change the seeds are more important than ever. One evening a woman washes up on their shore. Atmospheric, mysterious, and full of family drama, it was very hard to put down.
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I LOVED this! She’s one of my faves after absolutely loving Migrations so I had very high expectations, and this did not disappoint. She’s on my automatic read list, and the way she drip feeds the background, weaves in climate change, brings in nature and the animals, develops the characters, and makes you fall in love with them (particularly Orly) - just brilliant! One very clever lady.

Firstly, thank you thank you thank you to Penguin for the ARC!! Ever since I picked up the Chronicles of Kaya in my local bookstore in 2016, Charlotte McConaghy has been one of my absolute favourite authors, so when I saw this on my shelf on Netgalley, I scrumpt many screams. And now I have SO many thoughts!!!!

Firstly; by the end, I absolutely loved this. I stayed up far too late last night finishing it, glued to the couch, and cried and cried and cried through the last 20 pages. The third act was phenomenal, and everything I’ve come to expect from Charlotte’s cli-fi.

I did, however, find myself surprised by some little frustrations with the first half. I’ve never had issues with the writing itself in the past, but there were some sentence structure things that just didn’t read as smoothly as I wanted them to. I am, at my core, a chronic comma user, but there were sentences in Dom & Rowan’s POVs that just felt… unfinished/ not as smooth as they could’ve been with what felt like odd punctuation/ structure choices. Because of this, it took me longer than I expected to find myself fully drawn into the characters and story.

Once I was though… ughhhh I loved it. I loved the way that the different POVs were written, I loved loved loved the setting, and above all I wish I could quote it, because there was one line at the end of a chapter maybe 3/4 through that just struck me in the guts. This was a book about people and nature; the impact that we can have on each other if we let it happen, and the impacts that happen even when we don’t. Devastatingly hopeful even through the parts that are devastatingly sad.

I LOVE YOU CHARLOTTE!!! Thank you for this gift of a story- I’ll be thinking about the ending for a while, I think.