They’ve kept busy – Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps – but something is not right. She last promoted PR packages within the Press Association before full-time motherhood allowed Barbara to pursue her interest in Creative Writing.

Dystopias in which the state has seized control of women’s bodies are everywhere, from Sophie Mackintosh’s Blue Ticket to Christina Dalcher’s Vox and Joanne Ramos’s The Farm. Metronome’s rough landscape is surely spooky enough without any added non-ideal, ill-ideal, dis-ease, un-ideal .

The Goldsboro exclusive edition of "Empire of the Damned" by Jay Kristoff will feature block sprayed. His imagining of the sparse and chilly beauty of the island, together with the exiles’ thwarted attempts to make creative sense of both their fate and their surroundings, should make for an engrossing and memorable reading experience. Metronome is everything that I want from a book, this is most certainly going to be amongst my top books of this year. Whilst I'm not sure Metronome brings anything new to the genre, I did enjoy the atmospheric descriptions and Watson did a good job of making the couple's predicament believable. The final third I felt lost its way a little and seemed rushed but the story lingers long after you’ve finished.

Beautifully in fact, as we are literally exposed to the elements, so cleverly crafted in this debut novel.When a later event regarding the mainland is introduced, this is also skimmed over and I would have liked a little more speculation from the characters as to what had happened as well. How is the pill dispenser made to be so reliable, adaptable and indestructible but maintenance-free? Do we look at Whitney and Aina as the same people at the end as they were at the beginning – and in their shoes, would we be, after 12 years?

I don't think I would have been as interested if the blurb had hinted at the central idea of population control through fertility regulation because this is a story that has been told many times. How well readers respond to this novel will depend on how far they are prepared to tolerate an accumulating fuzziness around the facts.What matters most is that we are fully invested in Aina and Whitney and anything or anyone else that crosses their path. Sure, there’s an undercurrent of mild thriller, a human study, a deeper issue of crime and punishment - no matter what the crime or misdemeanour, and whether the punishment fits it. Overall, Metronome is an interesting story with a great premise that sucked me right in to its island setting, however I would have preferred a little more explanation and world building at times.