Pig Island (original 2006; edition 2007)

Took this one home with me from the shelf of one of the BookCrossers who attended the meeting at Terschelling. She needed her English books to move again :-)

This was a very good thriller with lots of twists and turns. I liked the ways the characters interacted and I definitely did not expect the ending. ( )

A strange book, one I picked up as I thought it sounded similar to The Wicker Man film.

The cover promises all sorts of horror and scares, but unfortunately the book really failed to deliver any of them. At times the plot got a little gory but I felt was more in comic effect rather than thriller.

Joe Oakes is a reporter whose job is to expose myths as frauds, so when a recording is taken of the apparent devil on Pig Island, and large amounts of Pig guts wash up on the shore he is sent to the north of Scotland to investigate. He takes his wife with him and she stays on the mainland whilst he goes to investigate. Pig Island is owned by Malachi Dove (a hoax preacher and current head of the Psychogenic Healing Ministry – a ministry that dismiss modern medicine). Something has gone wrong on the island and this has resulted in Malachi living in seclusion far from the other 30 members. These members are also unaware of the link between Malachi and Joe several years previous. Some of the congregation report seeing ‘the devil’ wandering around the island and reluctantly share their experiences with Joe. Not content with their explanations he decides to explore for himself – and that’s when the trouble begins.

The novel is written in alternating chapters through the eyes of Joe and his wife Lexie, which works quite well but at times can be annoying, especially as parts of the story are covered twice.

There are a number of twists and turns but a few of them are given away too early in the plot. I would say the book is worth a read, and really only gave it 3 stars instead of 4 because the cover promised so much extra (but I suppose it did its job and got me to buy it). ( )

This really isn’t a horror book like the blurbs would have you believe, it’s a fairly average thriller that isn’t convincing enough to be scary. The development of the plot was interesting enough to keep me reading, however the answers to any of the questions raised were all extremely obvious - apart from Lexie’s strange behaviour, which was not examined, explained or made relevant to the plot in any way at all. Unfortunately, I realised what the ‘big twist’ at the end would be a long, long way from the end – it was just far too obvious. Disappointing. ( )

Damn good twist at the end. I made the same hiss of realization through my teeth that I did when I saw -The Usual Suspects- and -The Sixth Sense- for the first time. Wicked. ( )