Review: Island of Secrets, Patricia Wilson

London-born Angelika, known in the story as Angie, decides to travel to Crete to find her mother's family before she gets married. Her mother has always been unwilling - to the point of terrified - to talk about what happened in her past. Angie tries to coax her grandmother into talking about it. 

She does, but starts the story a lot further back than Angie would like. Instead of just finding out about her mother, she finds out about the Nazi brutalities and massacres in Crete, a little known but hugely impacting event in the Second World War. Angie hears of her grandmother's loss in her son, Petro, and her fight to keep her two other sons alive. 

The story flits between past and present quite regularly, which can be quite a welcome breather for the reader. The more Angie learns about Crete, the more bound she feels there but also guilty about her mother who had not returned to the country since she left as a teenager. 

Bountiful and lush description abound along with great characters and gripping plot twists. The juxtaposition of the picturesque, tourist-trap Cretan idea with the horrors of its past are quite jarring. The more of these stories we find out about, the more we realise that the Nazis left behind more tragic histories than just the concentration and death camps. 

Though this story is a work of fiction it is based on true stories of real life Cretans, which makes Patricia Wilson's story telling even more powerful and spellbinding.