Welcome to Happiness Island. If you don’t end up happy, you may end up dead.

When journalist Hannah Dawes is sent to Comraich Island, an ultra-exclusive wellness retreat off the coast of Scotland, she expects an easy assignment: A few days of yoga, cutting-edge treatments and curated bliss, in exchange for a glowing feature about its enigmatic founder, tech entrepreneur Nathan MacArthur – the man she once loved and ran away from.

But the more Hannah experiences the retreat from the inside, the more uneasy she becomes. Her darkest memories are data-mined in the name of ‘calibration'. The retreat anticipates her needs before she knows she has them. And beneath Comraich’s sun-drenched perfection, guests seem strangely afraid to admit when they’re not okay.

When one of the guests is found dead in the retreat’s exquisite lagoon, Hannah begins to suspect that engineered joy comes at a horrifying cost.

Trapped on an island where her emotions are monitored and her movements are predicted, Hannah must decide who to trust – the man she once loved, the AI therapist that claims to know her better than she knows herself, or her own increasingly unreliable instincts.

How far is too far in the pursuit of happiness?

A twisty and high-concept thriller that fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware will love.

Laura Ward-Smith writes high-concept fiction that blends suspense-driven storytelling with contemporary themes. Her debut novel, We're All Happy Here, was shortlisted for the prestigious Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. She lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire.

© 2027 Laura Ward-Smith (P) 2027 DK Audio