A brilliant sequel to her first The Dry. Jane Harper has such an easy writing style. They are effortless to read and very hard to put down. She better be working on the next one! Set against the Australian outback, this book reminds me why I have never really been in to outdoors pursuits. Hiking and camping? No.
The common themes of the book for me were family; their complexities; what is left unsaid; what is said and then regretted; what we will do for our children and what we won’t; how forgiveness must be both meant and lived. I found it very touching: the exploration of Aaron’s relationship with his father.
Recommended.
Many thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Jane Harper shifts her setting from the devastating drought in The Dry to the equally hostile atmospheric environment of the Giralong Ranges, tough to negotiate, with its menacing history of Martin Kovac, a serial killer that still haunts the area, vivid in peoples memories and nightmares. Five women are on a corporate team building hike run by Executive Adventures, only four return. Federal Agent Aaron Falk of the Melbourne Financial Investigations Unit returns, this time with colleague, Carmen Cooper. They have been looking into financial corruption and money laundering at Bailey Tennants, and have a whistleblower in Alice Russell who is in the process of accessing crucial documents for them. Aaron gets a voicemail from Alice from which he makes out the words 'hurt her'. Alice has gone missing on the hike and Aaron is guilt ridden, suspecting the worst, thinking they endangered her life. Aaron and Carmen are concerned about what happened to Alice, and pressured by their bosses who persist in demanding that they get hold of the documents, no matter what. The novel follows the search for Alice and the parallel narrative that tells us what happened amongst the group of lost women as they struggle in the dense bushland, cold, wet, hungry, thirsty and desperate to survive.

Jill Bailey is viewed as nominally in charge due to her executive position in the company, although Alice constantly hacks away at her authority in her efforts to return to Melbourne to be with her daughter, Margot. It soon becomes clear that Alice is not nice, she is a mean and nasty woman, giving rise to a host of suspects with a motive to do away with her. Alice has a dark history with Lauren Shaw that goes back to their schooldays. Lauren is a biddable and vulnerable woman, unable to cope at work as her daughter, Rebecca, descended into the depths of misery with mental health issues after an incident at school. Beth is on probation after leaving prison, she has battled drug addiction, and is trying to mend her battered relationship with her twin, Breanna. As the women's situation deteriorates, the rifts, rivalries, conflicts, resentments and jealousies surface, destined to lead to violence. Aaron slowly begins to piece together the mystery of the missing Alice. Carmen proves to be instrumental in Aaron coming to terms with the guilt over the death of his father, a man well acquainted with the Girlang Ranges.

Jane Harper once again gives us a strong sense of location in the Girlang Ranges with her beautiful and detailed descriptions of the landscape, the dangers of snakes, with the howling winds and driving rain. Her psychological insights render her complex characters and their development authentic to the reader. Her writing is so vibrant that you think you are right there with the lost women as they stumble their way through the bush, hunger and fear contributing to their downward spiral as they turn on each other and Alice. The strongest recurring theme in the novel is the issue of just how far parents are prepared to go for their children. As I was reading this novel, echoes of Picnic at Hanging Rock came to mind, as indeed did the numerous other disappearances of people in the Australian landscape through the years. I am delighted to see that The Dry was not a one off for the author, this was a brilliant twisted read too. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

When one of the participants in a corporate teambuilding hike in remote terrain fails to return, police searchers are called in. Agent Aaron Falk and his partner also have a special interest in finding the missing woman.
Force of Nature is an even more powerful read than Jane Harper’s first novel Dry. Once again, the weather plays a key role in the story, but here, the battle is against cold and rain. Chapters alternate between the progress in the continuing search and a retrospective on how the ill-fated camping trip unfolded. As tension builds towards the conclusion, the chapters become increasingly shorter.
All the necessary elements are present in this read: important random events, a scattering of red herrings, past grievances, countless suspects, sweat blood and tears, an electric atmosphere and more insight into what makes Aaron Falk tick. This is a well written crime novel from an author who understands human nature. It will be interesting to see how the series develops.

Following hot on the heels of her first novel, ‘The Dry’, Jane Harper’s ‘Force of Nature’ does not disappoint. I loved both of these books and Aaron Faulk is becoming a firm favourite. I loved the setting in this book and the company team building trip in which the story is centred. ‘Survival’ in remote surroundings will always produce both the worst and best in characters. As with ‘The Dry’, the pace of the story unfolding in this book is just right and I think Jane Harper has mastered the rhythm of slowly revealing the pieces of the puzzle, layer by layer. Another excellent instalment in the Aaron Faulk series and I can’t wait to read the next offering. My thanks to Little,Brown UK and NetGally.

This is not your average thriller. I had read Harper's previous novel, The Dry, so I was looking forward to this. This I think is better again! Five female work colleagues go on a weekend bush survival team building exercise. At the end of that weekend only four women emerge from the Bush. Where is Alice Russell? Is she alive but lost as her colleagues believe or are they telling the whole truth? This is a book of petty grievances, bitchiness, personality clashes and violence. I loved it! Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy of this book.

Lost in the woods...

Two groups set off into the Australian outback on a team-building exercise. The men's team returns on time, but the women's team is late. The search for them finds nothing but, just as it's about to be abandoned for the night, four women burst out of the woods – some hysterical, some injured. But the fifth team member, Alice, isn't with them. Federal Agent Aaron Falk becomes involved when it turns out Alice made a phone call to him the night before, though all he can make out on the recorded message is a lot of static and two words... “hurt her”. Falk and his partner Carmen had been pressuring Alice to get information for them on her company, since they suspect her boss of money-laundering. What has happened to Alice? Did she just walk away from her team in the middle of the night and get lost or is there a more sinister reason for her disappearance? Just to add to the sense of unease the woods were where a serial killer once brought his victims – the killer is now dead, but his son is alive and no one know where he is...

It's not often I have to suspend my disbelief quite so early in a thriller, but I struggled with the whole concept that any company would send its inexperienced staff off into the outback with no professional support, no satellite phone, no flares – no way, in fact, of alerting anyone should things go wrong. Maybe they're tougher in Aus, but here the company management would be liable to major damages not to mention jail-terms. I also felt the idea that the son of a serial killer would necessarily be a serial killer was... dubious. I didn't feel Harper did enough to convince me of that likelihood by showing that the son had any kind of track record, nor did I feel that strand was really used effectively as the story developed. So I didn't get off to the best start with this one.

Having set up Alice's disappearance, the book then takes us back in time to follow the women on their hike, alternating this with Aaron and Carmen in the present assisting the search and slowly revealing the storyline about their investigation into the company. This works fairly well, and each trip into the woods focuses on a different one of the women so that we gradually get to know them all. It's not long before they get lost and then we get a kind of accelerated Lord of the Flies syndrome, as the women's veneer of camaraderie quickly gives way to greed, bullying and the dredging up of old scores. This is not a company I would choose to work for!

I don't want to be too hard on the book, since I suspect some of my relative disappointment with it is caused by too high expectations following Harper's excellent début in The Dry. But the technique of flicking back and forwards between two timelines is feeling increasingly tired and, a common complaint of mine these days, the first chapters telling us which women come out of the woods destroy any real suspense when we then go back in time. Every time one of the women other than Alice is in peril, we know she survives. I genuinely don't get why writers think these prologue-type chapters are a good idea, especially in a thriller. The book is also too long for its content – another common feature of current crime/thriller fiction. It drags badly in the middle and somehow the plot gets too convoluted for a thriller and yet not complex enough for a crime mystery. While Harper does achieve a feeling of creepiness at several points in the woods, the major storyline doesn't live up to its promise.

On the upside, Aaron and Carmen mesh together well and are a team I'll be happy to see work together again. Harper's writing, characterisation and powers of description are just as good as in her début – the book just needs a sharper plot and tighter structure to create a real feeling of suspense. All the elements are there and, while I think authors always have the primary responsibility, as a newish author I feel Harper deserved a stricter editor who would have made the criticisms several reviewers are now making. I always suspect publishers want to rush second books to market after a successful début, but sometimes it would be better to take a little longer – readers will wait. In the end, this is an averagely good thriller with the potential to have been an excellent one. Now that the always tricky second novel is over I look forward to seeing how Harper develops as the series progresses.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Little, Brown Book Group UK.

Like her The Dry, this doesn't challenge the conventions of the psychological mystery but it is a confident and assured example of the genre. Harper has a natural fluency in her writing which keeps the story flowing well, and Aaron Falk is an attractive investigator.

The story of a group of colleagues, isolated and put under pressure so that all the hidden tensions come to the surface is a stalwart of the genre - and is done well here. Structurally, there's some repetition as the alternating chapters show the investigators interviewing the group to find out what happened, and then a flip back for us to witness the events for ourselves.

Overall, a well-written page-turner.

What makes the writing of Jane Harper so appealing to me is the very balanced and articulate style that flows with so little effort (or so it seems) from her writing. In "Force of Nature" she expertly relates a story in both the present and past timeline drawing them together in a nail biting conclusion and in a sleight of hand exposes the perpetrator.

Two teams from BaileyBennets embark on a weekend of outdoor pursuits and teambuilding along the Mirror Falls trail in the Giralang Ranges outside Melbourne. Alice Russell was supposed to deliver important documents to Federal agent Aaron Falk and his assistant Carmen Cooper and by so doing exposing malpractice at BB. Regrettably at the end of the weekend of executive bonding one employee, Alice Russell, fails to emerge and there is great fear for her safety and welfare. Her fellow friends and colleagues appear to be shocked and fear she may have walked alone into the unforgiving wooded and bush environment. As the two agents dig deeper all is not as it should be amongst the hikers and slowly they begin to uncover a web of treachery not only prevalent in the BaileyBennets work place but also stretching back many years.

For those of you familiar with the writing of Jane Harper and in particular her excellent first novel "The Dry" it is refreshing to see not only the return of Aaron Falk but to learn a little more about his childhood with his late father whom he loved dearly. If we add to this a serial killer known as Marin Kovac who butchered and buried a number of victims in the Giralang Ranges then we have all the ingredients for an ingenious mystery. I can honestly say that Jane Harper once again kept me glued to this thrilling story as the layers of friendship and deceit are uncovered exposing an underbelly of hatred and envy. I had no idea who the killer was until revealed and that surely must be the mark of a master storyteller. As in her first novel Mz Harper uses the harsh and beautiful Australian landscape to great affect..."a curtain of white water. A river tumbled over a cliff edge and into the pool far beneath them."......"The neat trees lining the nature strip looked like plastic models compared with the primal lushness that had lurked over them for the past three days."....."The air was so crisp Jill felt she could almost touch it, and the freshwater spray cooled her cheeks. It was an hypnotic sight, and as she drank it in she almost felt the weight of her pack lift a little from her shoulders.".................

Many thanks to Little Brown Book Group and netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.

Brilliant crime writing. A great thriller that comes to a fantastic climax. The strong characters had me riveted from the first page, while I waited for the story to unfold. There were plenty of surprises and I really enjoyed the way the author revealed them throughout the book. A real page turner. Once again Jane Harper thrills her audience. A great book. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Jane Harper for the copy of this book. I agreed to give my unbiased opinion voluntarily.