The Last Migration

Written By Miriam Hanna
TLM.JPG

The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy
Reviewed by Mimi
📘📘📘📘📘

Franny Stone is a determined and damaged woman who will do whatever she can to follow the path of the last remaining Arctic terns. She talks herself onto a fishing ship and manages to convince the crew to take her on an unknown voyage. The driving force? A deep love, the kind your can feel bleeding through the pages of the book. It’s difficult to understand why at the beginning but the narrative flows in a way that you get gently invested into finding out.

This is a beautiful debut and so original. With glances back in time scattered throughout, you uncover how Franny got to where she got to. We understand the complicated family circumstances and the severe mental health problems she was raised around. She meets the love of life, Niall a professor 10 years older than her, and marries him almost instantly uncaring for the societal norms. Their love of conservation brings them together but Franny experiences how profound it is to be understood and they beat all the naysayers who laugh at their rushed romance.

The circumstances that led her to be on that boat are heartbreaking but the conclusion leaves you feeling really satisfied. I honestly wasn't expecting it. It’s not a fast read but one to be relished.

Miriam Hanna

Aka Mimi. I have known Linda for a very, very long time. We grew up together and you learn very quickly that when she gets an idea in her head, you would be an idiot not to back her to see it through. When the idea of the book club came up it was another lightbulb moment where I knew this wasn't only going to be a success but really fun.


I have always been a bookworm. Remember when you were little and you went shopping with your mum or dad and they gave you a toy or something to occupy yourself with whilst you were in the trolley? I used to get books to keep me quiet. They were and are my ultimate form of escapism and more and more they are about understanding who I am as a person. Books make me cry more than films and TV Shows. I can get lost for hours. I love historic fiction, political thrillers and gritty crime novels but also biographies and memoirs of people I find interesting like sportspeople. I was fortunate to be in the Harry Potter generation and if weren't for those books I don't know what I would have. Young literature was so poor at the point. To have a book that had me and my family queuing up at midnight to buy was seriously special.

Whether you listen to audio books, read off a kindle or stick to carrying around good old fashioned hard copies (that's me!) I truly believe reading is the best way to spend some time every day.


The books I would have with me on a desert island? 📚🏝Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Akzaban, Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters, The Power by Naomi Alderman, Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou, Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah and The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

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