Riot Recommendation

33 Of Your Favorite Books Set On Islands!

Jamie Canaves

Contributing Editor

Jamie Canavés is the Tailored Book Recommendations coordinator and Unusual Suspects mystery newsletter writer–in case you’re wondering what you do with a Liberal Arts degree. She’s never met a beach she didn’t like, always says yes to dessert, loves ‘80s nostalgia, all forms of entertainment, and can hold a conversation using only gifs. You can definitely talk books with her on Litsy and Goodreads. Depending on social media’s stability maybe also Twitter and Bluesky.

This Riot Recommendation collecting your favorite books set on islands is sponsored by Flatiron Books.

The Guest Book cover imageA lifetime of secrets. A history untold. No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life and its consequences will ripple through the Milton family for generations. Moving through three generations and back and forth in time, The Guest Book asks how we remember and what we choose to forget, and tells the story of a family and a country that buries its past in quiet, until the present calls forth a reckoning.

 


From deserted islands to island life, we are always here for a great read set on an island. So we asked you for your favorite books set on islands to stuff our empty beach bags with! *Cracks open coconut* Here are a bunch of your recommendations sure to whisk you away—or keep you running away from a murderer!

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert

They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite, Maritza Moulite

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry

Rani Patel in Full Effect by Sonia Patel

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand

Elisabeth Ogilvie’s Tide Trilogy

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

Written in Bone by Simon Beckett

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink

Jade City by Fonda Lee

The Cay by Theodore Taylor

Hawaii by James Michener

The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island by Earl Swift

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Circe by Madeline Miller

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

America Pacifica by Anna North

The Island by Olivia Levez