Literary Fiction · Free kit
Wild Dark Shore
Dominic Salt and his children Raff, Fen, and Orly are the last caretakers of Shearwater Island, a storm-cut rock near Antarctica that holds a global seed vault. Researchers have already left; the sea is coming for the buildings, the beaches, and the seeds. Then a woman named Rowan washes ashore, half-drowned, and the family's careful isolation starts to crack. McConaghy's 2025 novel is a climate-haunted mystery about grief, ferocious love, and the impossible work of choosing what to save.
“But here is the nature of life. That we must love things with our whole selves, knowing they will die.”
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Wild Dark Shore Icebreakers
Answer in under 30 seconds. These connect to the book’s themes without spoiling the story.
Personality Reveal
1. When something is falling apart, do you start listing what to save first, or try to hold the whole structure up until you can't?
Personality Reveal
2. Are you more likely to sleep in the same house as everyone else for the sake of togetherness, or claim a separate room so you can actually breathe?
Personality Reveal
3. After a hard day, do you talk it out, go silent, or do something physical until the feeling moves?
Funny & Light
4. What's the most dramatic weather you've ever been weirdly proud of having survived?
Funny & Light
5. What's a plant, animal, or ordinary household object you would unreasonably insist on saving from a house fire?
Funny & Light
6. What's the longest you've gone without answering a message, and what was your actual excuse?
Would You Rather
7. Would you rather live somewhere breathtaking and remote with a handful of people you love, or in a crowded city where you are never alone and never fully known?
Would You Rather
8. Would you rather always tell the truth even when it wrecks the room, or keep one secret that actually protects someone?
Would You Rather
9. Would you rather be the person who swims out toward trouble, or the person who stays on shore and makes the plan?
Hot Take
10. Hot take: some family secrets are a form of love. Agree or disagree?
Hot Take
11. Finish this sentence: "People underestimate how much ______ can change a person."
Hot Take
12. Hot take: choosing not to have children because the world feels unsafe is a moral position, not a personal failure. Agree or disagree?
Personal Connection
13. What's one place that still feels like home even if you couldn't live there now?
Personal Connection
14. Who in your life would you trust to stitch you up — literally or figuratively — without turning it into a speech?
Personal Connection
15. What's one thing you still keep that belonged to someone who is gone?