Name: Wild Dark Shore
Author: Charlotte McConaghy

Wild Dark Shore is another intimate, moving and thought-provoking literary thriller from the supremely talented Charlotte McConaghy. Read my full review.

Wild Dark Shore Review - author Charlotte McConaghy

Publication: Penguin Random House Australia, March 2025

Genre: Literature, Mystery, Thriller, Drama, Action-Adventure

Wild Dark Shore Publisher Synopsis

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, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, 18 and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, 17, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; 9-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back towards the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realises Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters 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 heartstopping twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is a story about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us is ending.

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My Review

Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations (2020) and Once There Were Wolves (2021) were outstanding – literary, thrilling and impactful. So this long-awaited new novel Wild Dark Shore, another near-future climate dystopia, was always going to be a must-read.

It took me a moment to get my bearings with this highly intimate, swiftly alternating, multi-character perspective narrative. The atmosphere within the character ensemble is thick with secrets (and much simply unsaid) from the word-go. Layering upon that her evocative depiction of the hostile climate, rugged environment and isolated location, McConaghy has developed a slow-burning, foreboding menace.

At least we are here, in a place that seems hostile until you look more closely. Until you begin to see its beauty and its tenderness. Until you see the hidden abundance of it.

Her exploration of the highly nuanced, fragile line between nature’s striking beauty and ferocity, made for captivating reading.

I have felt it too. A stain on the island. But I shake my head, for this is not unusual. “We have a debt to pay to this whole world,” I say. “We’ve slaughtered creatures everywhere.”

Immensely compelling also was the concentric layers of turmoil explored within Wild Dark Shore — from the individual characters’ inner struggles with grief and trauma, the tensions and suspicion within a group reliant on each other for daily survival, through to the practical and existential impacts of the global climate crisis.

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The creeping tension and suspense accumulates as the mystery’s different threads unspool.

But for me, Wild Dark Shore’s most striking feature is the extent to which McConaghy plumbs the depth of familial love. Which particular aspects trigger readers’ emotions, and tear ducts, will depend on personal experiences. I was certainly aware of holding my breath and/or being moist-eyed multiple times. I found myself so impacted by this novel’s conclusion that I had to put it aside for several days before penning this review.

Wild Dark Shore is, once again, intensely thought-provoking and gut-punch moving writing from the supremely talented Charlotte McConaghy.