Published in paperback 13th April 2023 by Pan Macmillan.
From the cover of the book:
Summer on St Kilda – a wild, remote Scottish island. In the 1930s, two strangers from drastically different worlds meet...Wild-spirited Effie Gillies has lived all her life on the small island of St Kilda. But when Lord Sholto, heir to the Earl of Dumfries, visits, the attraction between them is instant. For one glorious week she guides the handsome young visitor around the isle, falling in love for the first time – until a storm hits and her world falls apart.
Three months later, St Kilda lays silent as the islanders are evacuated for a better life on the mainland. With her friends and family scattered, Effie is surprised to be offered a position working on the Earl’s estate. Sholto is back in her life but their differences now seem insurmountable, even as the simmering tension between them grows...
Then, when a shocking discovery is made back on St Kilda, all her dreams for this bright new life are threatened by the dark secrets Effie and her friends thought they had left behind.
Opposites attract in this epic and spellbinding novel, which transports us from the untamed beauty of St Kilda to the glamour and intrigues of high society in the 1930s.
The Last Summer is the first book in the Wild Isle series by Sunday Times bestseller Karen Swan, inspired by the true history of St Kilda and its small island community. It is followed by The Stolen Hours.
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St Kilda, 1930. Effie Gillies is a fierce and determined young woman, who has lived her whole life on the remote, and starkly beautiful Scottish island of St Kilda. Life is a constant struggle for the dwindling community on St Kilda, and the burden is particularly hard on Effie as the sole surviving child of her widowed and infirm father, as she feels the responsibility to step up as the bread-winner of the family. But Effie is up for the challenge: a better climber has never been seen on the island, something that does not particularly endear her to her male compatriots, and her knowledge of the local birdlife the islanders rely on for survival is second to none.
When Lord Sholto, heir to the Earl of Dumfries, and his father the Earl make a visit to the island, Effie becomes their guide for the week. The attraction between her and Sholto is instant, and Effie finds herself falling in love for the first time. But their lives are worlds apart, and when circumstances conspire to part them, Effie's world falls apart.
Three months later, the people of St Kilda are being evacuated from the island to be relocated on the mainland. This means an end to the harsh and traditional lives they have always lived, and most are looking forward to a better future, but Effie is dreading what fate has in store for her when this little community is scattered. Unexpectedly, she is offered a job on the estate of the Earl of Dumfries, which brings her and Sholto back together, but their reunion is not quite as she pictured, and when secrets emerge about the things Effie and her friends have left behind, the happiness she once hoped for seems further away than ever...
Based on real events around the history of wild and remote St Kilda, Karen Swan creates a fabulous character-driven, sweeping tale of love, loss, and new beginnings, set against one of the most fascinating eras of the past. The story unfurls from the aspect of wonderful protagonist Effie Gillies, beginning with a portentous prologue about Effie and her friends, and then spitting between the time BEFORE the evacuation when she meets Sholto, and AFTER when the community is evacuated to the mainland.
Swan layers this love story with luscious detail of life on the island of St Kilda, holding nothing back about the harsh environment the small community battled in order to survive, but also taking care to show the wild and magnificent side of the island and her people. Every character has a part to play in the drama that runs through this book, sparked by the budding relationship between Effie and Sholto, and Swan keeps some pretty momentous secrets to herself that will come back to haunt Effie later in the story...
My heart bled for the islanders when the golden promise of better prospects is tarnished by the reality of resettlement in an environment they were not prepared for, under the uncomfortable spotlight of a media frenzy. Once removed from every aspect of the lives and landscape they are familiar with, there are a lot of adjustments to be made, controlled by strict social boundaries, and coloured by the expectation that they be grateful for the questionable largesse directed their way. And Effie carries you through the conflicted feelings of the community to perfection.
In a delicious turn, Swan then goes on to explore class, money and entitlement is all its 1930s glory, as Effie finds herself caught up in the upstairs-downstairs drama of a grand Scottish estate, where her status as a St Kildan only enhances her position as an outsider. The ripples from events on St Kilda weave through this part of the story, ramping up the romantic and mysterious suspense as the full truth of the gulf between Effie and Sholto hits home, with lovely meandering mishaps and misunderstandings underpinned with themes of jealousy and betrayal - and the most entertaining sideways glance at the debauched decadence of the Bright Young Things.
I am always a sucker for a book that combines a spellbinding story, vivid characters, an intriguing look at the past, and a wealth of social history, and this book does that in spades. There is a wonderful little surprise in the closing moments of the book too, hooking you into the next instalment of the series, The Stolen Hours, which picks up the story from the point of view of Effie's close friend Mhairi. Guess which book is next on my reading pile... I cannot wait!
The Last Summer is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Pan Macmillan for sending me a paperback copy of this book in return for an honest review.
About the author:
The Last Summer is the first book in her five-book historical series called The Wild Isle Girls, set around the dramatic evacuation of the Scottish island St Kilda in the summer of 1930. It was partly inspired by Karen’s Scottish roots: her father’s family came from Skye, moving to Fort William where Karen was christened and where many of her family still live. Her childhood memories are full of Christmases, Hogmanay and summer holidays spent in the Highlands and she was married there in 2001.
She lives in Sussex with her husband, three children and two dogs.
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