Stranded

Stranded is Sarah Goodwin's 2021 survival thriller, published by Avon. Eight people are dropped on Buidseach, a beautiful and isolated island off the Scottish coast, to live for a year as part of a documentary project. Eighteen months later, only one of them turns up alive, in a fishing village, desperate to explain herself.

The story follows Maddy, who signs up believing the experience will remake her. The group starts out cooperative and hopeful. It fractures. Friendships turn into rivalries, resources run short, and the arrangement that was supposed to end with a boat on a fixed date simply doesn't — and the island stops being a challenge and becomes a trap.

Goodwin writes it as a slow-tightening account of ordinary people under pressure, closer to character study than to a conventional whodunnit, with the survival mechanics kept concrete and unglamorous.