More Nature Journal Than Novel 
 This is a book with several distinct components, all interesting in different ways. But the ingredients are not mixed in equal proportions--more like 4 parts nature writing, 2 parts human interest, and 1 part mystery--and I am not at all sure that they work well together. Let me take them one at a time. 
 The predominant element--so much so that I wonder if Geni originally intended a non-fiction nature book, rather than a novel at all--is essentially the journal of a year spent on the Farallon Islands, a protected National Wildlife Refuge thirty miles off the coast from San Francisco. The one inhabited island, crumbling rock rising to a peak topped by a lighthouse, is home to a small group of scientists, living together under primitive conditions, who study the marine life that at one season or another congregate around the islands in great numbers. The four parts of the book, from summer through fall, winter, and spring to summer again, are titled "Shark Season," "Whale Season," "Seal Season," and "Bird Season." Geni's descriptions are seldom poetic--the barren terrain does not lend itself to poetry--but they convey very well both the hardship of living on the island and the fascination and violent beauty of the savage ecosystem that makes it all worthwhile. 
 The second element is that of the people. The resident scientists have their own ecosystem. Galen, the eldest by far, is the warden of the colony. There are three other men, Forrest, Andrew, and Mick, and two women. One of these, Lucy, is Andrew's partner and a bundle of energy; the other, Charlene, is a young intern. Into this sextet comes the protagonist, a thirtyish photographer named Miranda (though they all call her Melissa, and she goes along with it). She is the novel's narrator, writing a kind of journal in the form of letters to her mother--letters that will forever remain unposted, since her mother died when Miranda was thirteen, and she has wandered the world ever since trying to work through her sense of loss. In this respect, the book somewhat resembles Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk, which also combines a nature journal with a grief narrative, although Geni's writing does not quite rise to Macdonald's heights. There is a story here, though, of Miranda's changing relationships with the others on the island, together with changes within herself that slowly transform her. Although there are a few dramatic events over the course of the year, I would never call this a plot-driven novel, and barely a character-driven one; there is just enough to sustain interest in Miranda as a human being and to string together her descriptions of the natural world. 
 But then there is that tiny third element of mystery. Over the course of the year, there is at least one crime, and several accidents resulting in serious injury or loss of life. Abby Geni drops hints that there may be more to these than meets the eye, but then immediately steers away from them; you are left thinking that you are making up the mystery element to give the book some semblance of a plot. I shan't say what happens at the end, except that it left me unsatisfied. Geni inserts a tiny reveal into the story itself, but then tacks on a rather clumsy epilogue to explain the rest--or some of the rest, for we are still left in doubt about a few things. So in the end, despite my fascination with the Farallon Islands, I was underwhelmed with the novel as a work of fiction, ending up somewhere between three stars and four.