Note: This book isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Eilanden #1: Het Eiland.
Book at the library I just kinda picked up one day, the premise seemed interesting. Spoilers ahead.
Stef is a teenager who one day wakes up alone at an abandoned island without knowing how he got there. The only other inhabitants are some animals and a group of children and teenagers who equally don't know how they ended up there, but have made a society for themselves there. Stef actively wants to go home to his family, but the children and teens of the island seem comfortable in their current lives and don't want to get involved in leaving. Stef is determined to find out how he got on the island, and to find a way home. It seems that, in order to succeed in those goals, he'll have to seek out a mysterious character known as the Ghost.
That's quite the mouthful of a synopsis, but honestly the story isn't that complex. Just a simple "how did I get here and how do I get home" story for Stef and later on, once they join him, the children of the island as well.
However, I'd be lying if I said I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Despite its interesting premise and some good elements (I liked some of the characters and the setting and mystery was interesting), it failed to really hook me at any point in the story. Sure, I was invested enough to keep reading, but there was no point where the story really grabbed me and I was totally into everything going on.
I also just gotta admit that I found the final explanation of how the children and teens got to the island was just a bit too predicable. It was a shipwreck. That's honestly the first explanation I thought of when I heard the children were all somehow alone on this otherwise abandoned island. I was expecting more of a unique twist to the reveal, but nope, it's a shipwreck. In combination with the Ghost being a shady character, some magical Island bullshit and a disease wiping out pretty much all adults.
Also, I personally found it a bit weird that none of the children (at first) seem to remember their lives or the Ghost, when in reality they knew him before being left alone. They also can't remember their parents, despite the age ranges from when they lost their parents being roughly four-seven years old, which is when children can definitely remember things.
Sure, I can buy some of them repressing these memories due to trauma (similar to how Stef repressed his memory of his sister). But all of them? Twenty people (twenty-two if we count the deceased twins) and not one has memories of their youth? And no, the book never in-depth explains why the children can't remember all this. It's implied to be trauma or something but again, I don't buy that all twenty of them wouldn't have a single memory of their lives before forming their own society. I myself have memories from when I was two years old, there's no way not a single one of these kids and teens wouldn't remember their parents from ages four through seven. It could be that this is some kind of magical Island nonsense (since the Island does have a will of its own and supernatural powers), but if it is it's not properly explained.
So yeah, ultimately this book fell just a bit flat for me. The reveal wasn't all that inventive and exciting, and the lack of proper explanation for everyone's amnesia does bother me. I did enjoy some elements like the mystery, setting and some of the characters, but once the pieces started to fall into place the story just got weaker and weaker for me. I also thought the Ghost was a pretty underwhelming villain, honestly. So yeah, not great. I might read book two at some point, might not. We'll see, I guess.
Rating: 3/5
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