👀 First impressions:
When I spotted The Island Retreat on the shelves, it felt like exactly the kind of book I needed. The premise is irresistible: six strangers arrive at a luxury villa on Corfu, each hoping that a week of therapy, sunshine, and writing their life stories will somehow fix what is broken inside them. Running the whole thing is Rose Talisman, a former TV therapist whose career imploded five years earlier in a very public and very catastrophic way. She has staked everything on this retreat. If it fails, she loses it all.
Cathy Kelly is a bestselling Irish author with over twenty novels under her belt, and she is known for writing warm, emotionally rich stories about real women navigating messy, complicated lives. I have enjoyed her work before, so I went into this one with high hopes and a cup of tea, fully expecting to be swept away to the Greek islands for a few hundred pages.
✅ What I Liked:
The setting is absolutely gorgeous. Kelly writes Corfu so vividly that you can practically smell the wild herbs on the hillside and feel the Mediterranean sun on your skin. Villa Artemis, with its sea views and pine trees, is the kind of fictional location that makes you want to open a new tab and start searching for flights. It is the perfect backdrop for a story about people peeling back their layers, and Kelly uses it beautifully.
Where this book really shines, though, is in its characters. Kelly has a gift for writing people who feel instantly recognisable. Each of the six guests arrives carrying their own complicated history, and the slow unravelling of their stories is genuinely compelling. You get to know them through their therapy sessions with Rose, through their interactions with each other over meals and walks, and through the life writing exercises that force them to confront things they have been avoiding for years. There is a lovely sense of community that builds between the guests as the week unfolds, and some of the quieter moments of connection and vulnerability are the most powerful in the whole book.
Rose herself is a fantastic central character. She is not presented as some all knowing healer who has everything figured out. She has her own demons, her own past that she is running from, and the tension between her role as the person who is supposed to help everyone else and her own unresolved pain adds a really satisfying emotional layer to the story. Kelly also explores some genuinely thought provoking ideas about the modern desire to be “fixed,” and whether true healing can happen on a neat timeline, which gives the book more depth than your average beach read.
The warmth and heart that Kelly is known for are here in full force. There are moments of real humour alongside the heavier emotional beats, and the balance between the two feels natural and well judged.
❎ What I didn’t Like:
My biggest issue with the book is pacing. The entire story takes place over roughly one week, and for six guests plus Rose, that is a lot of ground to cover. Some of the characters’ emotional breakthroughs feel like they happen a little too quickly and a little too neatly. Real therapy is slow and messy, and while I understand this is fiction and not a clinical case study, there were moments where I wished Kelly had let things breathe a bit more rather than rushing towards resolution.
Not all six guests receive equal attention, either. Some storylines feel richer and more fully developed than others, and a couple of characters end up feeling more like sketches than fully realised people. Bernard, for example, comes across as quite one note for much of the book, and while his story does eventually take an interesting turn, it takes a while to get there.
There is also a subplot involving someone from Rose’s past making contact, which is meant to add tension and stakes. It works to a degree, but it sometimes feels like it belongs in a slightly different book, and it pulls focus away from the retreat dynamics that are the real heart of the story.
I also found myself wishing Kelly had returned to her signature Irish setting. The Corfu backdrop is lovely, but there is something about her Irish family stories that feels more grounded and specific, and this novel occasionally reads as though it could have been written by any number of women’s fiction authors rather than being distinctly Kelly.
📚 Why You Should Read This Book:
If you love character driven women’s fiction with a beautiful setting and an ensemble cast, this book is absolutely for you. It is a warm, comforting read that still manages to ask some interesting questions about how we deal with our pasts and whether we can truly reinvent ourselves.
Fans of authors like Marian Keyes, Sheila O’Flanagan, and Patricia Scanlan will feel right at home here. If you enjoyed Kelly’s previous novel Sisterhood, this shares a similar warmth and emotional depth. It is also a wonderful choice if you are looking for a holiday read that offers a bit more substance than your typical poolside thriller. Anyone who has ever thought about what it would take to really face the things they have been avoiding will find something to connect with in these pages.
💭 Final Thoughts:
The Island Retreat is a book that does exactly what Cathy Kelly does best: it gathers a group of flawed, relatable people together and lets their stories collide in ways that are moving, entertaining, and ultimately hopeful. The Corfu setting is dreamy, the characters are easy to invest in, and the emotional core of the story is strong. It is not without its flaws. The pacing feels rushed in places, not every character gets the page time they deserve, and a couple of the subplots could have been tightened up. But the overall reading experience is a genuinely enjoyable one. It is the kind of book that leaves you feeling a little warmer and a little more reflective when you put it down, and sometimes that is exactly what you need.
Final Rating ★★★★ – Sun soaked secrets and the slow, beautiful work of learning to heal
About the Reviewer
Minnie
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Book lover, chronic over-reader, and firm believer that the best stories are the ones that leave a mark. I review fiction across all genres with a soft spot for anything character-driven and emotionally complex. Want to know more? Head over to my About page to learn the full story.
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