The Island Girls (A Heartbreaking Historical Novel) by Noelle Harrison

313 pages

Publisher: Bookouture

Buy Links: Amazon | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play

Blurb

I guess our life on the island was one which never fit you right. I like to imagine you some days when I look out the window across the harbour, all those miles of sea and land between us. But, sister, we are always connected.

When young nurse Emer loses her beloved sister, she is haunted by grief and desperate to escape her memories. Taking a job in Vinalhaven, a rocky outpost in the wild Atlantic, feels like the refuge she so badly needs.

Her patient, Susannah, has lived in isolation for many years, since the tragic death of her sister Kate caused her to withdraw from island life. However, when Emer discovers a bundle of letters in a rainbow quilt in her bedroom and shares the story of her own loss, Susannah opens up. She begins to tell the story of Kate’s brutal and secret past, and her marriage to a man with a heart as cold as the ocean.

But when Emer starts asking locals about Kate, the island air sizzles with hostility. There are people who would rather that Susannah kept quiet, who have no qualms about threatening Emer. But despite the warnings to stay away, Emer is determined to find out what really happened the night Kate died – and the final secret that is keeping Susannah a prisoner to the past.

Review

Everything Noelle Harrison has ever written has hit me in the feels…hard. The Island Girls is no exception to that rule. In fact, this story is laden with love and loyalty but also with pain, loss, grief, and guilt. And every single emotion is so easy to related to it’s impossible to read this book without having your heart both broken and restored. 

As the blurb describes, The Island Girls tells the parallel stories of two women who, more than a generation apart have their lives turned upside down by the loss of their dearly beloved sister. It’s a story about the things we do for love, the sacrifices we are willing to make for those who are dear to us, and the often high price we have to pay for loving with all our hearts.

There are many parallels between the Susannah and Emer’s story; the depth of the love for their sister being the main similarity, but not the only one. Caring for Susannah is both Emer’s attempt to redeem herself after she’s made what she considers an unforgivable mistake, and a form of refuge. Travelling to Vinalhaven is Emer’s attempt to get away from everything and everybody, including the man she loves, who remind her of how she’s failed Orla, her sister.

Susannah’s continued presence on Vinalhaven is a similar form of self-punishment. Her reasons for staying (as revealed very late in the book, so I won’t mention them) are no longer valid, but she’s sacrificed too much for too long and has given up on any hope of getting back all she lost.

Learning Susannah’s back story is Emer’s opportunity to find her way back to herself, to salvage her life and herself, if she’s willing to see, listen, and learn the lessons. The question whether or not Emer will be able to put herself back together is as tension-filled as the slow but relentless unfolding of Susannah’s history.

As always, Noelle Harrison has created a glorious novel. Her sentences evoke images and emotions. She paints vivid pictures with her words, be it of the landscape the story takes place in or the emotions motivating the characters. It is impossible not to get taken in by Emer and Susannah. Their heartbreak, their loyalty, and even their stubborn refusal to put reality ahead of their feelings, all bleed off the page, into the reader. It left me wanting to slap both women almost as much as I wanted to hug them and tell them ‘it’ wasn’t their fault.

Ultimately this is a story about love, about loyalty, and about learning to live with the fact that sometimes love and loyalty aren’t enough to combat the very real horrors of life. The Island Girls is a heart-breaking yet glorious and ultimately uplifting story that will stay with me for some time to come. This is not the first time I whole-heartedly recommend a story by Noelle Harrison, and I’ve got a feeling it won’t be the last either.