(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia)
Heading off on holidays, all we really want is to get away from the insistent stresses and strains of everyday life.
Hand us a cocktail, sit us by the pool or in a bush cabin somewhere, banish the internet to a simpler, more analogue time and kick back in a world where expectations are few and pleasurable rewards are many.
It’s what holidays should be about, but while Andie Alcott, the protagonist of Karina May’s vibrantly romantic novel, That Island Feeling, has just arrived on Pearl Island for seven idyllic days with her besties – Taylor who’s in the middle of the messy aftermath of a divorce, and Grace and Lizzie – relaxing seems to be the farthest thing from her mind.
She has a strict timetable for each and every day’s activities, and no deviation shall be tolerated, she’s distracted by the fact that she’s left her younger brother Toby in charge of overseeing their dad with dementia in his nursing home and it appears that the landlord of their holiday let has gone ahead and double-booked the place.
Not exactly the recipe for a cosy, chilled week away where all her cares and concerns can fall away; it appears they have come right along with her and aren’t going away any time soon.
She’s convinced she is the lynchpin of her social circle and that her drive to have “i” dotted and “t” crossed must be heeded or the world, holiday-tinged or otherwise, could fall apart.
We dock to some more splashes and delighted squeals, and I [Jack] swing the suitcases off two at a time and set them on the wharf. I’m putting the boat into reverse when I spot an item tucked under one of the seats. It’s the karaoke machine I intercepted from Andie when she boarded. I move to retrieve it before changing my mind, and instead use my foot to nudge it further out of sight.
The island may be small, but it’s nice to have a guarantee that I’ll see her [Andie] again.
Similarly burdened, but for wholly different reasons, Pearl Island-born laconic hunk Jack Cooper, a man with many talents and a heart of gold who blames himself for the downturn in the economic fortunes of his home.
While the island has stunning beaches, gorgeous bush, amazing food and overflowing hospitality, not to mention a brand-new resort where his blighted oyster leases used to be, people just aren’t coming in the numbers he and his fellow islanders need and Jack can’t helping feeling the burden of the shortfall.
So, he works overtime to make sure that the visitors who do turn up have a fantastic time, and that of course extends to one Andie Alcott who immediately catches Jack’s attention as he runs her and her friends across from the mainland to their island for their week away.
He knows he should play favourites but there’s something about Andie that intrigues and attracts him, and it turns out vice versa, and so, while these two lost and overly responsible souls do their best to save the world as they know it, they are also finding the possibility of a home in each other’s company too great a temptation to resist.
The stage is set, of course, then in That Island Feeling for a good old-fashioned will they-won’t they tussles of the hearts, driven by an unacknowledged and unspoken need they both have to let go of the pressures that drive and shape their lives and to relax into each other and the way island life might be more than just a holiday vibe.
(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia)
That Island Feeling is a delight no matter how you slice it.
It has a delectable setting, two main characters who are destined to be together but whose road to that inevitable union feels natural and surprising and happily buoyant, secondary characters like Jack’s exuberantly idiosyncratic, amateur filmmaker mum, Hazel, and his best friend, Charlie who are fun and likeable and integral to the plot, and a groundedness and emotional honesty that means that even though That Island Feeling has an attractive romantic fairytale quality to it, as all good romcoms should, that it very much has one foot still in the real world.
It’s the constant back and forth between the real world and the one on the island, which to be fair is very real for the people who live there, that concerns Andie most of all – yes, she and Jack might have something that could last beyond a hot holiday fling but can island Andie, all impulse, flirty fun and carefree bonhomie even exist in a world of nursing home visits and medicine pick-ups?
And would Jack want the pell-mell Sydney-version of Andie who is consumed by worry and deadlines and the responsibilities of being the primary carer for her dad?
That’s the million dollar question for Andie who thinks Jack’s world is far more blissful and escapist than it actually is, and who doesn’t know if she can compete with that.
Shit. What was that holiday hook-up rule again? Don’t catch feelings.
The fact that he’s [Jack] speaking about me [Andie] like this in front of his mother is making my heart race.
‘Yes,’ Hazel agrees. ‘Let’s get our Andie-girl back safely.’
But the thing, and this is one place where That Island Feeling excels, is that Jack is bearing far more of the weight of the world than Andie thinks he is, and it’s this disconnect in perception that drives much of the engaging narrative of the novel.
Both of these people need to set down their cares, worries and concerns, and they are considerable whether each party can see it in the other’s life or not, and embrace the fact that they are each other’s place to escape to – not the island, not holidays but each other.
But they also have to forgive themselves for whatever imagine sins they think they have committed, release themselves from the recrimination that burdens them equally for different reasons and rest in life on life as a whole and in each other in particular.
It’s a beautiful, if not entirely trouble-free journey, and May does a beautifully evocative job of keeping the magic of new romance and hope and possibility alive while letting each of these quite lovely people find their roads to redemption and healing, and ultimately, to each other.
Romcoms should be an escape from the everyday, and That Island Feeling is more certainly that, but it’s also rich in raw humanity and the darkness of troubled pasts, and in acknowledging that these exist and must be dealt, it imbues the romance that follows, and the emotional home it creates, all the more richer and captivatingly heartfelt and worth hanging into this end of this wonderful novel for.