Review by Karen (Retired Booksellers);
The setting in this novel is enthralling St Kilda, an island in the outer Hebribes off Scotland. Though the main character, 18 year old tom boy Effie Gillies, we learn so much of the life of the Islanders and numerous birdlife on the exposed, steep, barren, windswept and cold land. In 1930 the Islanders abanded St Kilda for the mainland changing their lives.
This novel, the first in the series, has it all location, survival, fasinating characters, clash of social classes, romance & murder. Loved this novel & can't wait for the next novel.
Summer on St Kilda - a wild, remote Scottish island. Two strangers from drastically different worlds meet . . . Wild-spirited Effie Gillies has lived all her life on the small island of St Kilda but when Lord Sholto, heir to the Earl of Dumfries, visits, the attraction between them is instant.
For one glorious week she guides the handsome young visitor around the isle, falling in love for the first time - until a storm hits and her world falls apart. Three months later, St Kilda falls silent as the islanders are evacuated for a better life on the mainland. With her friends and family scattered, Effie is surprised to be offered a position working on the Earl's estate.
Sholto is back in her life but their differences now seem insurmountable, even as the simmering tension between them grows. And when a shocking discovery is made back on St Kilda, all her dreams for this bright new life are threatened by the dark secrets Effie and her friends thought they had left behind.
Opposites attract in this epic and spellbinding novel, which transports us from the untamed beauty of St Kilda to the glamour and intrigues of high society in the 1930s.
The Last Summer is the first book in The Wild Isle series by Sunday Times bestseller Karen Swan, inspired by the true history of St Kilda and its small island community.
Romance, Historical fiction, Narrative theme: Sense of place
Paperback
Karen Swan
512 pages
H: 196mm W: 130mm Spine: 39mm
Weight: 360 grams