Book Review: Force Of Nature

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This is my book review of Force of Nature by Jane Harper.

Book Summary:

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 is keenly interested in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into an 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:

I absolutely loved the first paragraph of the prologue…

“Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things. One: No one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell. And two: Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you.”

With a beginning like that, who wouldn’t want to keep reading? I was immediately smitten with this book.

Five women go into the woods on a hiking retreat for their company, and four come out. So what happened to Alice? She took off by herself, supposedly, and they never saw her again.

This was a well-written book with an amazing plot. The story alternated between the four women who emerged from this grueling hike and Federal Agent Aaron Falk, who is working the missing persons case.

Force of Nature is a mystery that keeps your full attention from start to finish. This is an author I will be keeping my eye on.

About the Author:

Jane Harper was born in Manchester, UK, and moved to Australia with her family at age eight.

She spent six years in Boronia, Victoria, and during that time gained Australian citizenship.

Returning to the UK with her family as a teenager, she lived in Hampshire before studying English and History at the University of Kent in Canterbury.

On graduating, she completed a journalism entry qualification and got her first reporting job as a trainee on the Darlington & Stockton Times in County Durham.

Jane worked for several years as a senior news journalist for the Hull Daily Mail before moving back to Australia in 2008.

Jane lives in St Kilda with her husband and daughter.