Force Of Nature

My rating: * * * *

Goodreads Description

Five women go on a hike. Only four return. Jane Harper, the New York Times bestselling author of The Dry, asks: How well do you really know the people you work with? When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder?

My Review

Last year I read and loved Jane Harper's The Dry, and it became one of my favourite reads of 2017. I was thus a little nervous about reading Harper's second novel as often a reader can feel let down by subsequent novels when the author sets the bar so high with the first one. But I'm pleased to confirm that this was not the case with this novel. I think that perhaps I was slightly more taken with The Dry, but I thoroughly enjoyed and would highly recommend Force Of Nature.

Within the first few pages, I was once again struck by just how good this author's writing is. She has such a natural, relaxed writing style and for the second time, I was totally in awe of her writing. Her descriptions of the Australian bush are so real, her characters well formed, and what I liked most, the dialogue was spot on. The characters all spoke to each other like real people.

Moving on then, let me just say this one thing about this title - thank goodness I've never worked in an office where employees are asked and expected to thrash out into the bush as one big happy family, to carry heavy backpacks, traipse along hardly visible paths for miles every day, and camp under the stars together for a whole weekend. Anyone who vaguely knows me knows one simple fact about me: I do not camp, ever. No thank you very much. The whole thing just sounds like a disaster from start to finish...and as it turns out, I think the characters in this book would agree with me.

This is a well thought out story, the characters, especially the five woman lost out in the bush, are well developed and interesting, and the plot as a whole works. The pacing may have been a tad bit slow, but I found The Dry to be the same. The thing is though, I was never bored. In fact, the opposite. I couldn't wait to get to the end of the story to see exactly what had happened to the missing member of the team.

Overall this was a great read, and I definitely recommend it for fans of Harper's first book...and even if you haven't read the first book, I think you'll love this one. The two stories are totally independent of each other and they don't follow on from each other, and hence you'll have no problem if you start with this one.

I can't wait for the author's next release. Bring it on!

My Rating: * * * *

Publication Date: March 2018 (South Africa)

Genre: Crime Fiction

Format: Trade Paperback

Source: Review copy received from the publisher. Many thanks to author, Jane Harper and Jonathan Ball SA for my copy. It was my pleasure to read and review this title.