Sisters Jess & Rosie are spending the summer with their dad staying at a lighthouse on Bird Island. Since the divorce, they have not spent much time with him & his new wife, & their half-brother, Charlie, & their dad hopes that the time spent together whilst conducting a ornithological survey will be good for them all. Jess would rather be spending the holidays with her friends, & that feeling grows deeper as they approach the island. It's fairly remote & a 4 hour boat ride from the mainland & when they reach it, they realise that they are going to be stranded there with no contact to the outside world except for a radio.

The island itself is rather sinister-looking with tall cliffs filled with the nesting seabirds that give the island its name. Added to this, the lighthouse where they are going to be staying looks less than welcoming. Soon after their arrival, they meet a group of hunters staying at the other side of the island who are permitted to stay on the island for a short time & kill hundreds of the birds each year. One of the hunters is Will, a teenage boy whose sister died at the lighthouse. Will tells Jess & Rosie that the lighthouse is haunted, & that it would be best for their family if they all left before they meet a grisly end. Jess doesn't believe him whilst Rosie is intrigued, but when strange things start to happen, they both realise that Will may have been telling the truth.

I've always thought that lighthouses are naturally eerie places & this one definitely fits the bill. The plot itself was a little choppy - it was very fast-paced, so fast in fact, that I think some of the scene-setting & character development suffered due to this. Compared to an earlier book, Frozen Charlotte, the reader doesn't get to know the main character & therefore feels less invested in the outcome. There were some things that I thought were a little odd as I was reading it but these were explained in the conclusion & made more sense. The ending itself I thought was really good, it definitely wasn't happy ever after. Overall this was a mixed bag which gets a 3 star rating.

TW: If you are sensitive to animal (or in this case bird & gastropod) deaths then there are quite a few in this book - the birds killed by the hunters etc - & there is a very sad child death. There's also some scenes which may be triggering to anyone with claustrophobia.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Little Tiger Group/Stripes Publishing, for the opportunity to read an ARC. I am voluntarily giving an honest review.