Fresh from his move from America, Link is enrolled into a prestigious private school called Osney. Link is your typical introvert (or geek as some would call them). He likes books, video games and is socially awkward. As his brilliantly intelligent professor parents home schooled him until his teens, he hasn't been around many other his age.
On his first day at Osney (a very sports focused school) he is inducted with a challenge: to run around the school quad in 12 seconds. Link does the slowest time the school has seen in years and instantly becomes the kid that everyone taunts and is outcast.
After 3 years of hell he comes to a deal with his parents: take the 2 week long school summer trip and then he can leave for good. Tragedy strikes on the plane as it goes down over an island. Link survives with a few of his biggest bullies from Osney. As the situation becomes more desperate we see bravado stripped away and true colours begin to surface...
This book will inevitably be compared with the classic Lord of the Flies. However with this being a contemporary setting it will resonate with the YA audience.
Parts of this book really had an impact on me (even though I'm way above the YA reader age!). A key theme in this book was bullying. I was bullied mercilessly throughout the whole of my high school years and into Sixth Form. Luckily it was only in my last year at Sixth Form that mobile phones became the 'in' thing to have but not many of the kids had them. Oh how lucky I feel reading this. The cyber form of bullying is not only abhorrent but incredibly cruel. I have no answers as to how this can be policed/stopped but it's an incredibly thought provoking subject.
I think the first 90 or so pages about Link's life at school was very relevant to the premise of the story so you could understand his thought processes and experiences prior to being stranded.
But back to the bulk of the story: the island. Link is a complex character. Even though he went from bottom of the pile to the top, you didn't necessarily like all of his decisions or treatment of others despite having first hand knowledge of how being badly treated affects your mental well being. This made him more relatable to me. He's a flawed young man who wants to assert some authority after being the underdog for so long.
All of the kids changed dramatically throughout the book. Those that were alpha became beta and vice versa. You will become enraged at parts and invested in them at others.
The Island nicely links in with Bennett's first offering of S.T.A.G.S (which I thoroughly enjoyed) in the sense that it uses school politics and social hierarchies. And that ending! wow. I thought I had it all figured out in terms of the clues that were dropped but I really didn't.
If you want a brilliant desert island story with a modern twist then I highly recommend The Island.
Overall a cracking YA read and a 4 star book for me.