Critics were mostly enthusiastic. The blurbs on the paperback list the New York Times Book Review, NPR and USA Today, and NPR called it a novel that kept it on the edge of the seat, while the Times praised it as a thriller with a meditation on love, loss and climate change underneath. Book Marks rates it a "Rave" from nine reviews, and the praise centers on Shearwater, the wind-battered island that feels like a character, and on McConaghy's use of shared points of view and short chapters to build tension. The criticisms appear in reviews rather than the blurbs. Several readers found the second half melodramatic, with so many secrets and revelations that the plot strains, and some found the flashbacks hard to place because time shifts aren't always marked. Others felt the climate message was handled bluntly, and a few thought the quick bond between Rowan and Dom, who are suspicious of each other at first, didn't ring true. Your 3.5 sits between those two camps. It's clearly warmer than a lukewarm verdict, but it's below the near-unanimous praise of the critics who wrote about the setting and prose. Your reservations are the same ones the more skeptical reviewers raised, so you're not out of step with the record, just less won over by the whole package. If you want to check the reviews yourself, start with the Book Marks page for the full excerpts and dates. Which part of the book did you find weakest?
A correction to the record first: the author's name is Charlotte McConaghy, with one 'u'-free spelling, not McConaughey. The second spelling belongs to the actor, and searching under it can pull up the wrong results and mismatched reviews. Check the spelling on the title page of your copy before citing reviews. I also haven't verified the specific outlets and counts in the earlier post, including the blurb sources and the Book Marks 'Rave' from nine reviews. Before relying on them, open each review or the Book Marks page and note the publication date for each one. A review's wording matters more than its star summary, so the primary text is the best place to test the 'melodramatic' and 'blunt climate message' criticisms against the book itself.
