Safe Return Doubtful

Climate Fiction – Australia – Published March 2025

This is an entertaining piece of climate fiction that feels exaggerated, and with plenty of convenient coincidences, to reach a wider audience. I can’t really argue with that, or label it as a criticism; it seems the book is getting plenty of sales, and with its message, that can’t be a bad thing.

After fleeing Australia eight years earlier due to bush fires, and floods, Dominic Salt,, widowed, lives with his three children on Shearwater Island, an extremely remote former research outpost between Tasmania and Antarctica. Here he acts as caretaker for a seed vault intended to replenish global food supplies. During a storm, his oldest daughter, 17-year-old Fen, rescues a woman named Rowan who washes ashore following a shipwreck.

It’s a page-turner; a fast moving story that maybe predictable in the directions it takes, but is well written and mostly gripping.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5