Safe Return Doubtful

Ireland – Published 2025

In Donegal, Ireland, 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. A fisherman, Ambrose Bonnar, burly and bighearted, offers to adopt the child into his own family, his son, Declan, wife, Christine, and elderly father. The community remains fascinated by the baby, now named Brendan, who, even as an infant, casts something of a spell over them.

This novel has gained some good reviews, but I struggled to see it as anything more than a simple tale of a family in 1970s coastal Donegal – it needed something more, I don’t think the writing is strong enough to sustain it otherwise.

Further, the reader doesn’t get to know the characters well enough to care about, or dislike, any of them.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5