Five Stars are not Enough!!

This is a very engaging book, which combines contemporary relationship and family drama with well- researched and well- written historical fiction. The family issues were very relatable!
I couldn't put it down. I was completely transported to Crete, and cared about Maria, Anna & Sophia.
Wonderful, read it!!! ( )

An excellent debut novel, mainly set in the past, with the hook of a young woman finding out about her family history.

The setting is Crete, and particularly Spinalonga where there was a leper colony for many years. Perhaps the author paints too rosy a picture of life there, but there are plenty of deprivations shown, as well as the deep trauma of permanent separation from one's loved ones, if there was any sign of leprosy.

Very well written, thought-provoking and a lot of insights into a life and situation I knew almost nothing about.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-island-by-victoria-hislop.html ( )

Took a while to get into it, but once it did I couldn't stop reading. Great book :) ( )

[This is a review I wrote in 2007]

When I first picked up the book and started reading I thought the first two chapters were quite stilted and hesitant, almost as if they had been written as an afterthought, but carry on reading and you're rewarded with the main body of the story which I just couldn't put down.

Essentially the book follows the story of Alexis, who has gone to Plaka in Crete to find out about her mother's Cretan family. Begininng with Alexis's great-grandmother Eleni, trace the history through her daughters Anna and Maria in wartime Crete, and find amongst it all a history that is richly interwoven with the small island of Spinalonga off the coast of Plaka, a former leper colony.

With wonderfully rich descriptions, this is a moving page-turner - great for a holiday read, or any kind of read if you haven't got a beach holiday on the horizon. A brilliant first novel. ( )

8/10: An enjoyable and moving read, though I thought the modern 'bookends' to the story were unnecessary, and added little. I would have preferred the writer to concentrate on the story of Spinalonga. An appendix that gave a brief history of real-life Spinalonga would have also been very helpful. That's the problem with historical fiction that has some basis in reality. You're never quite sure what you've learned. ( )