Published in paperback 9th May 2024 by Pan Macmillan.
From the cover of the book:
An Island full of secrets . . .Summer, 1929. Mhairi MacKinnon is in need of a husband. As the eldest girl among nine children, her father has made it clear he can’t support her past the coming winter. On the small, Scottish island of St Kilda, her options are limited. But the MacKinnons’ neighbour, Donald, has a business acquaintance on distant Harris island also in need of a spouse. A plan is hatched for Donald to chaperone Mhairi and make the introduction on his final crossing of the year, before the autumn seas close them off to the outside world.
Mhairi returns as an engaged woman who has lost her heart – but not to her fiancé. In love with the wrong man yet knowing he can never be hers, she awaits the spring with growing dread – for the onset of calm waters will see her sent from home to become a stranger’s wife. . .
When word comes that St Kilda is to be evacuated, the lovers are granted a few months’ reprieve. But will a summer of stolen hours together just lead to more heartbreak . . . ?
The Stolen Hours is the second book in Karen Swan’s bestselling Wild Isle series, which began with The Last Summer.
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St Kilda. Summer, 1929. Mhairi MacKinnon is the oldest girl in a family of nine, and looking for a husband. Options are limited among the men of this tiny island community, and with her postmaster father struggling to support his growing family she needs to cast her net a little wider if she is to find a suitable marriage partner.
Their neighbour Donald suggests travelling across the water to the distant island of Harris, where he is planning to visit before the storms of autumn and winter close in. He has an acquaintance there whose son is looking for a wife, and thinks Mhairi should accompany him to see if the young couple hit it off.
Events conspire to send Mhairi to Harris with Donald as her unlikely chaperone, but the trip does not go quite as planned. Mhairi returns to St Kilda in love and with an offer of marriage she feels she cannot refuse, but her prospective groom is not the man who has captured her heart. Instead, she has fallen for Donald, and he for her... sadly, Donald already has a wife, albeit one who shares as little liking for him as he does for her.
Over the harsh winter, and all through the preparations for the islanders to be evacuated in the summer of 1930, Mhairi and Donald spend as many secret hours together as they can. But they know their affair cannot last...
The Stolen Hours is the second book in the excellent Wild Isles series about St Kilda, which began with Effie Gillies' story in The Last Summer. You do need to have read the first book before this one because, although this tale follows a different character in Effie's friend Mhairi, their two storylines are entwined - especially when it comes to the secrets that bind them about events on St Kilda at the time of the evacuation.
Mhairi's tale begins the summer before Effie's, when she finds herself embarking on a last minute adventure to Harris in the company of grim-faced Donald. Mhairi dreams of meeting a man who will be her romantic destiny, but the cold hard slap of reality brings with it a coming of age journey very different from her girlish imaginings. Destined to marry a man wildly unlike the one she hoped for, she is also now desperately in love with Donald, someone with hidden, passionate depths.
In parallel with Effie's story, and with intriguing side glimpses of the events from the first book, Mhairi and Donald engage in a forbidden affair with consequences that ripple forward in time. Their romance is full of heady passion, true love, and fleeting stolen moments away from prying eyes, but the clock is ticking down to the time they must all leave St Kilda - and with it the twists that bring their storylines crashing together with Effie's to carry the plot forward into an unknown future.
As in the first book, there is oodles of social history about life in the remote Scottish islands, this time widening from St Kilda to Harris, with all the contrasts and new characters this entails. I loved the new insight this gives you about these isolated communities, how they lived, and the expectations they had for their lives and happiness.
There is a different feel to the overall pace and atmosphere in Mhairi and Donald's tale than in Effie and Sholto's love story, with an intensity of passion and sadness that builds almost unbearably. This complements the story in the first book beautifully, adding lovely layers that Swan weaves together to fit Effie and Mhairi's parts together to drive the overall story on. The thread of mystery about events you know are coming adds a lovely sense of impeding doom, but Swan saves many secrets for this book that you have no idea about from Effie's story too, which makes this thoroughly compelling in its own right.
I adored this book just as much as the first one, and cannot wait to continue on to add the part Effie and Mhairi's friend Flora plays in the overall Wild Isles story next with book three, The Lost Lover!
The Stolen Hours is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Pan Macmillan for sending me a 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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