The Croatian Island Library - Eva Glyn - ★★★.½
AUTHOR: Eva Glyn
SERIES: Bookish Escapes, #3
GENRE: Contemporary Fiction
PUBLICATION DATE: January 16, 2026
RATING: 3.5 stars.
In a Nutshell: A contemporary fiction set on a floating library travelling across the Croatian islands. Character-oriented, slow-paced. Good use of the found family trope. More focus on the humans behind the library than the library itself. Some great themes, but slightly repetitive at times. A few scenes felt unnecessary. Not much romance, which I appreciate. A nice choice for fans of the genre.
Plot Preview:
Thirty-five-year-old Ana Meštrović has accepted a new government contract to use her catamaran as a library carrying books across various islands of Croatia. She needs to make this project a success so that she can prove to her parents that she can have her own career independent of their oyster farming business.
Two new crew members will join Ana for this summer project: fifty-three-year-old British national Lloyd – the librarian in charge who has a secret in his past, and twenty-two-year-old Natali – the mechanic who is under-confident about her skills and intelligence. Can the three strangers form an effective team and ensure the success of the project, especially when each of them is also battling a personal demon?
The story comes to us in the third-person perspective of the three main characters.
I rarely read books that are set in exotic locales as they often provide a picture-perfect view of the place rather than reflecting a possibly mixed reality. But it was tough to resist the ‘library’ angle of this title and hence I gave it a go.
Unfortunately, the book turned out to be more about the characters than about the books.
Fortunately, the characters were rather interesting. (And one was even likeable!)
Bookish Yays:
🚢 Natali. Easily the best character of the book. Loved her arc and her growth over the pages.
🚢 Obi the dog. Who cannot love bookish dogs? Obi is perfect! I love how her presence is felt throughout the story.
🚢 The three main characters coming from distinct generations and having distinct personal concerns. This ensures that each of their arcs contains enough drama without overlapping with the others.
🚢 The found family trope, thanks to the crew who learns to work with each other. Used really well.
🚢 The varied themes in the book, whether grief or body clock worries or stammering or parental abuse or past secrets or potential relationships or academic skills vs practical skills. Most are nicely utilised.
🚢 The tiny titbits about the Croatian war, which we mostly learn about during the flashback scenes. I like how the story keeps its focus and doesn’t allow the war content to get top priority by including a detailed history lesson.
🚢 The setting of the Croatian islands – easily one of the biggest appeals of the book.
🚢 The ending. Without going into spoilers, all I can say is that I prefer this kind of ending in this genre than a forced rapid wrap-up.
Bookish Okays:
📖 The start was a bit shaky for me. I even came to GR to check if I had ended up with a mid-series book by mistake. It jumped directly into characters’ discussions without our knowing anything about them. Thankfully, after a few chapters, things start making more sense. (Strangely, after I drafted this review, the series details have been updated on GR. But the books look standalone, so I have no idea if there are any repeating characters herein.)
📖 Ana. I love that a thirty-something woman character is the skipper of her own catamaran and trying her best to ensure that her crew is satisfied. At the same time, her self-doubt gets really annoying and repetitive after a while.
📖 Lloyd. A good character in general, but has some specific behavioural traits that didn’t endear him to me. I found it weird that we learnt more about his distant past than about his recent past. And I disliked everything to do with *the character from the distant past*. It negated a lot of the feelings he expressed about his *recent past*. Plus, his use of certain words to describe the said character further turned me off. But I did appreciate the way he was around Natali and Obi.
📖 As the book is so character-focussed, we hear a lot of their inner conflicts and introspections and external challenges. What we don’t get much of is anything beyond the characters. Even the challenges of life aboard a catamaran don’t come up that often, and when they do, they are mostly restricted to comments about food.
📖 Slow pacing, which is somewhat understandable for a character-oriented book. But the content is also repetitive, especially in between.
📖 Several Croatian words in the content, for which there is a detailed glossary at the start. Some of the entries in the glossary (in the ‘Swearing and Insults’ section) don’t offer direct meanings of the words. I was annoyed by how frequently characters used the exclamatory word ‘Sranje’, sometimes even repeating it unnecessarily.
📖 The titular library, which was the main reason I grabbed this book. I love the concept, which reminded me a bit of ‘The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek‘. However, the book either finishes all actual library scenes instantly without showing any detailed interactions or just reports the library-related incidents post their completion using another character as the mouthpiece. There’s hardly even a book title mentioned! This was really disappointing to me. I enjoyed whatever teeny glimpses we got of this amazing floating library and would have loved to see more actual bookish interactions in the foreground.
Bookish Nays:
🏝 Given that this is general fiction and not romance, I don’t see why a nude swimming scene had to be a part of the narrative. (It wasn’t erotic, just awkward.) This, and a couple of other scenes, simply weren’t required and didn’t suit the overall tone of the book.
🏝 Too much of miscommunication and secret-keeping.
Overall, this is a good-enough read, as long as we are prepared for a character-focussed contemporary work than for a novel about books and libraries. Though the latter content is also present, it is mostly passive than active. I wasn’t bored by the story at any point, but I did find myself wishing for more bookish stuff as promised by the title.
Recommended to readers of contemporary general fiction who enjoy character-focussed storytelling in an exotic location.
My thanks to Rachel's Random Resources, One More Chapter, and author Eva Glyn for a complimentary copy of 'The Croatian Island Library' via NetGalley, and for allowing me to be a part of this blog tour. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.
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Blurb:
Where books are borrowed, friendships are forged and secrets uncovered…
As a beautiful summer unfolds in the Croatian islands, Ana Meštrović embarks on a new venture – transforming her beloved catamaran into a floating library.
Joined by crew members Lloyd, a widower whose past threatens to overshadow everything, and Natali, a young mechanic afraid of her own shadow, the newly formed trio all have their own powerful reasons for needing the travelling library to be a success.
As they explore stunning coastlines and visit picturesque harbours, they learn that, sometimes, the most profound changes happen not just in the pages of a book, but in the bonds formed along the way…
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Author Eva Glyn aka Jane Cable:
Eva Glyn writes escapist relationship-driven fiction with a kernel of truth at its heart. She loves to travel and finds inspiration in beautiful places and the stories they hide.
Set mainly in Croatia, her contemporary stories are more about friendship than romance, the coming together of people through shared interests, and the opportunity to make fresh starts in their lives. A love of books is a common theme too, so her publisher, One More Chapter, has christened them the Bookish Escapes collection which currently includes The Dubrovnik Book Club, and The Santorini Writing Retreat, with The Croatian Island Library to be published in January 2026.
In addition Eva has written two Second World War dual timeline romances, An Island of Secrets and The Collaborator’s Daughter, and a new beginnings novel entitled The Olive Grove. All are set in Croatia, a country she loves.
Although she considers herself Welsh, Eva lives in Cornwall with the man she met and fell in love with more than thirty years ago. She also writes as Jane Cable.
Connect with her on:
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Check out this book:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/236762102-the-croatian-island-libraryPurchase from: https://mybook.to/CroatianIslandLibrary
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This has been a stop on the #TheCroatianIslandLibrary blog tour conducted by Rachel's Random Resources. (@rararesources) Thanks for stopping by!
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