ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – We Search the Island for Grace by Bonnie Burke-Patel

Posted on 27th July 2026 By Nicola

We Search the Island for Grace by Bonnie Burke-Patel will be published on 30th July by Bedford Square Publishers. My thanks to Emma Dowson from EDPR for the proof copy.

They gather at Saints’ Climb, the only house on an island off the Somerset coast. Seven men with nowhere else to be at Christmas. Father and son George and Xavier Starvely; James, a taciturn archaeologist uneasy with the living; Victor, a French widower; Rik, the groundskeeper; and Chris and Nathan, the two men who want to make a documentary about this place and its extraordinary collection of medieval art. And the housekeeper Marianne, who seems to find peace in serving. Erected around the stone labyrinth built into the floor by monks, Saints’ Climb is a house heavy with loneliness.

Xavier Starvely is a successful academic with a real life elsewhere. Yet he is wracked with guilt over the fragmentary memories of a childhood tragedy, and when his guests arrive on the island for Christmas, the deaths begin afresh.

A labyrinth is different from a maze. There are no false turns or dead ends: there is only one winding path, which, followed faithfully, will always lead to the centre. What will each find at the centre of the labyrinth? And can it save them?

Bonnie’s debut I Died at Fallow Hall was shortlisted for The CWA Gold Dagger, The Betty Trask and The Val McDermid Awards.

We Search the Island for Grace is Bonnie Burke-Patel’s third book and it’s the third that I have read and enjoyed.

The island in question is a remote one with only one house on it: Saint’s Climb. Just before Christmas five men travel there to stay with the owners, father and son George and Xavier Starvely. The only woman, housekeeper Marianne, takes the group to eight people. The island provides the location to a locked-room style mystery when a body is found and that’s only the start of it.

Burke-Patel has a beautiful way of story-telling, adeptly bringing the threads together and expertly burrowing into the heart of the characters, drawing out their feelings, memories and their inner turmoil. I think this book was inspired by Agatha Christie’s books and indeed they are mentioned more than once. When I start one of this author’s books I immediately feel like I could have been transported one hundred years back in time and so it’s a slight revelation when the modern day setting manifests itself, although it is only very slight as it’s done so well.

This book is an enjoyable and cryptic murder mystery novel. Secrets from the past come back to haunt the characters and I honestly had no clue as to the denouement. I loved the island setting and the house that was built on the site of a former abbey with a labyrinth preserved in the ground. All very atmospheric and the coming storm only adds to that feeling. We Search the Island for Grace is an extremely well-plotted gothic crime novel that harks back to the Golden Age of crime fiction.

Born and raised in South Gloucestershire, Bonnie Burke-Patel studied History at Oxford. After working for half a decade in politics and policy, she changed careers and became a preschool teacher, before beginning to write full time. She lives with her husband, son, and needy cat in south east London.