I expected better

4 female art students decide to travel to Alaska to do a bit of soul-searching and concentrate on their ‘art’. Sammy’s brother has a friend who owns an island in the Bering Sea that they can use free for 3 months. It sounds almost too good to be true and of course, it is! The first hitch is that the brother decides to come to the island as well and turns up with his new girlfriend. He went out with his sister’s roommate for a while and she isn’t quite over him yet. The house doesn’t look at all like what they saw on the website and is rather dilapidated. The reader also knows that all girls have secrets in their past. The first night strange things start happening; they find an old diary and a skull buried in the sand, their boat is sabotaged overnight. Then, one of them is murdered. …

We learn the story from the POV of each person on the island, but one of them can be untrustworthy. This constant switching of the narrator sometimes causes multiple versions of the same event. You also have to check who’s talking at any given time. It takes about a third of the book to get acquainted with the characters.
It’s sold as a psychological thriller but I wouldn’t go that far. There is suspense and you do want to find out what’s going on but the pace is too slow. The ending is kind of what I expected as well. I only didn’t understand why they all had to die as well; the reason given is a bit shallow in my eyes.
The book carries references to “And then there were none” and I appreciate the similarities but this is far from Agatha Christie. The idea and premise are good but unfortunately, the book doesn’t deliver. It’s not a bad book; it just could have been a lot better.
I thank One More Chapter for inviting me to read this book and this is my honest, unbiased review.