Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy, 2025
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fictionLiterary fiction
A storm delivers a nearly drowned stranger to a remote island family, and the rescue forces them to reckon with what they owe each other. A remote-island family story with a satirical edge, dread and tenderness, told in an intimate, steady voice.
Feels like dread and tenderness. About society and family.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy literary crime with a tight family focus and a storm-bound setting. The narrator's blunt confession about favoring one child may unsettle readers who prefer gentler family portraits.
Why read it
It puts a family's private loyalties under storm pressure and asks what rescue costs, with a satirical eye and real tenderness.
A page from the book
The confession a parent makes only inside his own head.
You are not meant to have favorites, but my youngest is that. If only by a hair, and with a gun to my head. If I really, really had to answer. And not because we are most alike: that is my oldest and me. Not because we are least alike: that is my daughter and me. Maybe it is because he is curious and kind and so smart it can make your eyes water. Maybe it’s because he whispers to the wind and hears its voice in return. Most likely I don’t know why. But it may also be because, for one brief moment long ago, I wished him dead. Charlotte McConaghy.Australian novelist Charlotte McConaghy wrote Migrations and Once There Were Wolves; the latter follows a biologist reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Wild Dark Shore for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy literary crime with a tight family focus and a storm-bound setting. The narrator's blunt confession about favoring one child may unsettle readers who prefer gentler family portraits.
- What is Wild Dark Shore like?
- A remote-island family story with a satirical edge, dread and tenderness, told in an intimate, steady voice. Feels like dread and tenderness. About society and family.
- What should I read after Wild Dark Shore?
- If you liked Wild Dark Shore, try Pretty Girls (Karin Slaughter), Then She Was Gone (Lisa Jewell) and The Teacher (Freida McFadden).
A taste of the feed
What a woman weighs before she turns a man down.
It’s the truth. I’m sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don’t like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there’s no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can’t walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it’s easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.
Pretty Girls · Karin Slaughter
What it looks like to see the warning signs only afterward.
But one wrong move, one tiny kink in the time line, it was all over. Not just their love story, but all of it. Youth. Life. Ellie Mack. All gone. All gone forever. If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along. But back then, when she knew nothing about anything, she had not seen it coming. She had walked straight into it with her eyes open.
Then She Was Gone · Lisa Jewell
What it feels like to be grateful for your life and wish it over.
I am so lucky. I have a beautiful house, a fulfilling career, and a husband who is kind and mild mannered and incredibly handsome. And as Nate pulls the car onto the road and starts driving in the direction of the school, all I can think to myself is that I hope a truck blows through a stop sign, plows into the Honda, and kills us both instantly.
The Teacher · Freida McFadden
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