The story tells about Nina, a mother of two, planning to go on holidays with her new boyfriend.

However, the road away from the isolated winter bleakness of Sandling Island seems to be littered with obstacles, frustrating her plans at every turn.

As day turns to night on the island and a series of half-buried secrets lead Nina Landry from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island for Christmas and more whether they will ever leave it again.

Caroline Boucher of The Observer said that the novel has "mastered suspence" and that this "is a book that keeps you reading into the small hours".

[2] Michael McGirr of The Sydney Morning Herald stated that the novel "is more single-minded than many books produced by a single writer".