Metronome by Tom Watson

 

Not all that is hidden is lost. For twelve years Aina and Whitney have been in exile on an island for a crime they committed together, tethered to a croft by pills they must take for survival every eight hours. They've kept busy - Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps - but something is not right.

Shipwrecks have begun washing up, and their supply drops have stopped. And on the day they're meant to be collected for parole, the Warden does not come. Instead there's a sheep. But sheep can't swim...

As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets. And if he's been keeping secrets, maybe she should too. Convinced they've been abandoned, she starts investigating ways she might escape. As she comes to grips with the decisions that haunt her past, she realises her biggest choice is yet to come.

This was a strange one. I loved the idea of it when I read the blurb, and ny reading pal told me to talk to her about it when I was finished as she’d recently read it. 

The idea of Aina and Whitney being punished for a crime by being placed on island alone, was something different to anything I’d read before. The pills had me intrigued, I wondered why they had to keep taking them. The story starts out really interesting, I liked reading the flashbacks to their lies before this, but the world sounds crazy! When you read it you’ll know what I mean.

The last maybe third of the book seemed very rushed, and I think it could have been played out a bit more. The first ⅔ were really detailed and had me hooked, but the last ⅓ just felt too quick.

Overall a good story, a really different idea.