Review: One Night on the Island

One Night on the Island by Josie Silver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
I was really looking forward to reading this book, but I have to admit I was pretty disappointed when I finished it. This is the story of Cleo and Mack. They both have decided to visit the remote Irish island of Salvation to take some time away from their lives and hopefully regroup, but for very different reasons. Because of a miscommunication, Cleo and Mack find themselves booked to stay at the same one-room lodge for the foreseeable future. The forced proximity with a complete stranger turns the relationship between the two main characters from barely civil cold war to something much much more.
The synopsis of the book sounded great, and in the beginning everything looked quite promising. There was quite a bit of introspection from Mack and Cleo, but they were both isolated in a small cabin with another stranger, so it seemed to kind of fit in to the action. The secondary characters were a lot of fun and very well-drawn. And when Cleo and Mack began to interact with them the story picked up a bit. Up to this point I was really enjoying the book, despite having to suspend belief a bit: why did Mack think he was entitled to stay there over a paying customer? There had to be SOMEWHERE else he could stay.
Then, we find out that Mack is married. Married. He tells Cleo that he and his wife have been separated for a very long while, but it is MORE than obvious (from the increasingly monotonous and repetitive inner monologues we are subjected to) that Mack still cares for and loves his wife. He doesn't feel like he can pursue anything physical with Cleo until he finds out his wife has been seeing someone else for months...that doesn't seem like the basis for a good healthy relationship, does it? "Well, turns out my wife, whom I've loved for more than a decade, is cheating on me, so why don't we just have an affair, too?! I mean, I have every thing about her, from her appearance to her smell to her personality indelibly etched on my soul, but sure, Cleo... Let's go!"
And then even when Cleo and Mack decide to go all in and have a "no-strings-attached" relationship, we still have to slog through pages of introspective inner thoughts from both characters. I got so sick of reading about Cleo's "self-coupling ceremony" that I started skimming whole paragraphs at a time. When it finally came time for the "marriage" I pretty much skipped the whole thing. And I really found myself not caring at all about the citrus shampoo scent of everyone in Mack's family or how skinny his kids' arms were or what happened that one time they all went fishing... It got really boring. And confusing--was the reader supposed to be investing in a future for Mack and Cleo or rooting for them to find their own separate paths (especially since Mack was MARRIED WITH KIDS)? Even though I felt like Cleo was a bit spoiled and deserved whatever she got, I really got fed up with how hung up on Susie Mack was. Ugh. She doesn't like you anymore, bro!! And then Susie's attitude at the end just made me roll my eyes. By the last few chapters I was just really thinking, "What was the point of all of that?!" And then the ending felt kind of out of the blue, tacked on and anticlimactic.
So, in conclusion, I really wanted to like this book, and in the beginning it looked were promising, but it completely missed the mark. I would not recommend it.

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