How’d I find it? The reliable East City Bookshop recommended McConagy’s first novel Migrations, a book I devoured in record time, so I am always excited to see this Australian author’s name on a new cover.

Why not 3 or more stars? How I wanted to love Wild Dark Shore. The powerful and complicated women of McConaghy’s novels mesmerize me, and her language is as sensual as always. The scaffolding simply shows too much in this one, and the unconvincing shifts in voice, chapter breaks, and melodramatic schlock (“it doesn’t matter where I end and she begins”) kept my eyes rolling.