Lost Paradise: The Savages of the Blue Lagoon by Marian Andrew
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A party that altered the course of their lives….
When their plane crashes, they are stranded on a strange island. Six unlikely survivors must unite to confront dark secrets and lurking dangers in a desperate fight for survival.I was born into the heart of Manhattan’s elite circles, and I never imagined my life would take such a wild turn. Attending this esteemed institute in Scotland seemed like the perfect escape from the suffocating expectations of my family.
But a campus party gone wrong changed everything.
Caught in a drug raid, I was summoned to the Dean’s office, where my fate intertwined with five others. Instead of expulsion, our punishment was a twisted stroke of fate. We were to miss the two-week orientation events and embark on a humanitarian project in Africa, installing irrigation systems for a remote village. A teacher who looked more like he belonged in a men’s glossy magazine would accompany us.
However, fate had other plans.
Our plane plunged into the ocean, leaving us stranded on an island.
As we battle the elements, we rely on each other to survive and struggle to maintain our sanity. We unearthed a chilling truth lurking beneath the island’s surface. Things are happening here, and something sinister threatens our existence. Together, we need to conquer our differences and confront the darkness if we ever hope to see civilization again.
Will this motley crew of survivors— the Princess, the Criminal, the Athlete, the Brain, the Basket Case, and the Teaching Assistant — survive the perils of the island, outwit the menacing cannibals, and unravel the malevolent secrets concealed in the depths of the shadows, or will their journey end in tragic demise?
LOST PARADISE is a standalone novel with no cliffhanger ending, written from multiple points of view. This contemporary romance features rich world-building, a deep plot filled with mystery and adventure, dark themes, and a cross-over between British and American main characters.
Lost Paradise
The Breakfast Club + Lost + The Blue Lagoon = ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🩵🖤💜❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: ☺️😆😎😚🥰
The heroine: – Eve – The princess. she is a wealthy American, the daughter of a highly successful Manhattan businessman. She is used to being the queen of any school she attends, of her group of friends and socialites. However, this year she is the new girl at Hawthornes Valor Institute, an exclusive, private Scottish college. She lives in fear of returning to New York and being married off by her father to forge important business alliances. In the world she comes from, that is traditionally what is done with daughters to uphold the status and wealth of a family.
The Heroes: Jack – The basket case. He likes to watch people, get the lay of the land before deciding what to do and enacting his plans. He is also a talented hacker.
Astro – The criminal. He comes from the dark end of the East London underworld. His father, the leader of the Corinthian syndicate, whom Astro works for as much as any of his other lackeys, and when one of them slacks off, his father makes them pay, including his own son.
Zane – The athlete. He is a scholarship student from the United States and has come to train for the olympics. He came to Hawthornes Valor because of his skill in martial arts.
Byron – The brain. He is asian, and a scholar. He is “a two-time winner of the British Physics Olympiad AS Challenge and most recently won the BAAO Astrophysics competition and British Biology Olympiad.”
Mr. Coldwell – The teacher. He is an olympic gold medalist and is writing his master’s thesis for his studies at Cambridge. Meanwhile he is working at Hawthornes Valor to set up their martial arts and fencing teams for the Olympic trials.
The Story: When Astro throws a party, complete with free drugs to give out in order to get new customers and the party is raided, he, Eve, Zane and Byron are caught by campus police. The next morning, they are summoned to the Dean’s office where Jack also joins them. The dean gives them a chance to fess up to whomever brought the drugs and when none of them do, he tells them they will be given another chance, but only after they pay their debt to society in the form of helping a village in Mozambique by building a water sewage system. Though the school’s private jet crash lands into the ocean and they end up stranded on a deserted island.
The book is written in first person point of view and there are chapters told in the point of view of each of the main characters. I like that we get a view into the minds of each of the characters. I also love the fact that each of the characters is different in various ways. The book classifies the main characters: a Brain, an Athlete, a Basket case, Princess, and a Criminal (later adding a Teacher), though the first five immediately made me think of The Breakfast Club. Like in that movie that they each are characterized as one thing but find that they all are much more than just that one label. There are other parallels to The Breakfast Club, such as the scene where everyone is sitting around telling each other about their not so perfect lives. There is a remarkably similar scene in this book, and we even find out that many of the revelations that come out in that scene have some huge similarities to the revelations that are told in TBC, also some of the dialogue is nearly straight out of the movie.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask, a little surprised by his kind gesture. There’s a playful glint in his eyes, hinting at a depth of character beneath his charming exterior. “Because you’re letting me.”
“You know I have just as many feelings as you do, and it hurts when someone steps all over them.”
“There will be two hits,” he declares cooly. “Me hitting you. You hitting the floor.”
“We’re all pretty bizarre,” Jack says, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “Some of us are just better at hiding it; that’s all.”
Despite the somewhat tacky references to The Breakfast Club, a storyline reminiscent of both the TV show Lost and movie The Blue Lagoon, I found this book to be extremely interesting and compelling. There were also a few Lord of the Flies moments thrown in for good measure, and plenty of the steamy scenes you get in any reverse harem romance. I did like all the action and adventure, and I found the characters to be interesting and likable. I was very pleasantly surprised.
I voluntarily read & reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts & opinions are my own.
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