38. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

listened on Libby

298 pgs.

2025
Genre/Level
Finished 8/3/2025
Goodreads rating: 4.12
My rating: 4.25
Setting: contemporary tiny island off the cost of Antarctica, home of the world's seed bank.

My comments: At the moment, not really sure how I feel about this story.  It was tragic from beginning to end.  It was beautifully written, a tangle of facts that were given to the reader in a wonderful way.  It was slowly paced, though a little to slow in places.  But the pictures it drew in my mind!   Quite something.  And how do you frate a story that pisses you off and entertains you at the same time?  Very difficult.

Goodreads synopsis:  A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late―and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.