I really enjoyed this one which I read as part of a readalong – I am a huge fan of Jane Harper’s books so I had high expectations going in and I’m pleased to say they were entirely met! The Survivors is very much about secrets, lies, trauma and guilt, I feel. The small community aspect works beautifully here, as it does in many books in the genre. It creates an insular feeling as small communities begin to suspect and turn on each other which I just love. We follow main character, Kieran, as he returns to his childhood home with his new family in tow and is pretty much immediately thrown into the middle of a criminal investigation whilst also being constantly reminded of another tragedy over a decade earlier on the night of a now infamous and terrible storm. As ever, Harper is particularly fantastic at building a sense of atmosphere and setting. The location always plays a huge role in her stories. The Survivors also focusses on the relationships and psychological aspects of its characters as opposed to being more of a police procedural which I think works beautifully. I was completely drawn into the lives of these people and I was desperate to know what had happened both in the present and in the tragic deadly storm from years before. I didn’t see the resolution coming at all. I was incredibly suspicious of quite a few characters but was knocked sideways by the end reveal.

The only thing I am in sort of two minds about is the ending. The book ends pretty abruptly and I was left wanting to find out a little more about the aftermath – mostly because I was enjoying the book so much and just wanted it to go on and on, which is a sign of how well written and compelling The Survivors is! However, whilst it did leave me a bit shell shocked, I can’t deny that the ending has a powerful impact in its decisiveness which I admire. Overall, this was yet another brilliant thriller from Harper who has yet to disappoint in any way! I think my favourite book of hers remains The Lost Man which I thought was exceptional but I also loved The Survivors from start to finish and I cannot wait to read whatever Harper writes next! She is absolutely an auto-buy author for me.

Kieran and his partner Mia are on a trip back home to Tasmania to visit his parents; a sad time as his dad has dementia and his mum has made the difficult decision to put him in a home.

They meet up with their old friends Ash, Olivia and Sean at their old hang out Surf and Turf where Olivia is working. She introduces them to Bronte, her colleague, who they’d bumped into earlier on the beach.

After an evening of reunion they say their goodbyes and head off.

The next morning all are shocked to hear of a death on the beach - who is discovered to be Bronte.

Being back churns up the memories of Kieran’s and Sean’s brothers deaths, years earlier, and the disappearance of Olivia’s younger sister, both on the day of a terrible storm.

What ensues is the truth trying to surface about that fateful day and the death of Bronte in the present.

Wow! That was an intense read. I’ve never read anything by Jane Harper before but I’m certainly going to now.

I’d seen some reviews saying this wasn’t the best of hers, so I’m really in for a treat!

This was powerful, emotional and a real rollercoaster. So many feelings are brought up by Kieran who is a great protagonist. He has his flaws but that makes him honest and relateable.

Thank you so much to @netgalley @littlebrown and @janeharperauthor for my chance to read this amazing novel

Wonderful. As always Jane Harper doesn’t disappoint. From page one I was gripped and it kept me guessing all the way through, changing my mind after each drip fed plot twist. Brilliant

An excellent read, definitely recommend. The twists are well thought through, the pace is fantasti, and I was gripped from the very beginning

Over the past few years, Jane Harper has built her throne as undisputed Queen of Outback crime. In that respect, her fourth novel The Survivors represents a step change. Rather than the incredible isolation of The Lost Man or the wilderness in Force of Nature, Harper zooms in on the small community of Evelyn Bay on the Tasmanian coast. Yet at the same time, we are also on familiar territory with the central character Kieran Elliott returning home bearing a terrible guilt. Twelve years before, his moment of recklessness caused the deaths of two young men, one of them his own brother. With tensions in the town still strongly felt, Kieran tries to help out his own elderly parents and not attract too much attention. But then a body turns up on the beach and long-held secrets start to float towards the surface.

I've mentioned many times that I am not typically a crime fiction fan. There are lots of reasons for this - I don't enjoy reading about violence, I don't tend to like books that you can only read once and I tend to need at least one 'nice' character to connect with a story - but Jane Harper is always an exception for me. Her novels always feel more place than character with each story thus far exploring not just the incredible landscape of Australia but also the emotional effects it has on its inhabitants. As someone who was born in Australia but has spent over three decades living in the Northern hemisphere, Harper's novels have given me a different understanding of a country that has a lot of personal significance.

In The Survivors, Harper focuses on a town which relies on the summer tourist industry, then sits empty for the rest of the year. Kieran Elliott returns unwillingly with his partner Mia and their three month old baby Audrey. He is back to help out his mother who is barely coping with his dementia-stricken father. There are old friends to be seen but several other faces to be avoided. But then Brontë, a young waitress from the local Surf and Turf and newcomer to the area, is found dead on the beach.

Having raved about Harper's last three novels, it was a surprise to find that I did not find the same enthusiasm for The Survivors. Reflecting on it, I found there were a couple of reasons for this. First of all, Kieran feels like a much more downbeat protagonist. This is a strange thing to say given that The Lost Man's Nathan was battling isolation and depression. And given Aaron Falk's long-term angst. But Kieran's defining characteristic is his own agonising remorse over his role in his brother's death and that of his brother's friend. He feels guilty even for the good things in his own life. But while he is a well-drawn depiction of what it would be to exist every day with that weight of self-recrimination, he doesn't have any other distinguishing features. And that numbness doesn't make him an easy primary character.

There are other reasons too though. The victim Brontë had few ties to the other characters and felt under-developed. There are narrative reasons why Brontë's 'outlander' status but again, it meant that it was hard to really care about her fate. What business was it of Kieran's? And as an aside, the way in which he seemed to haul his infant child around as if nothing more consequential than a sack of potatoes really rattled me. At one point, he even leaves the child on the beach to go and wander off. I was so sure that this would be the precursor to something more serious.

The conflicts within The Survivors lack the emotional depth of Harper's previous outings. Olivia frets that she may have wasted her education now that she's back at Evelyn Bay to look after her mother, working in the Surf and Turf. Ash is cross because the snotty incomer writer bought Ash's late granny's house and ripped out the garden that Ash had planted. It's not the Shakespearean drama of The Lost Man or even the spine-chilling tragedy of The Dry. Even the finale feels rushed and lacks true resolution.

But that all implies that The Survivors is a bad book - it's not. It has some really striking moments. On his first night home, Kieran is leaving the bar when he notices Liam, son of one of the dead men. Now grown up, Liam also works at the Surf and Turf and his animosity at Kieran's role in his father's death is obvious. But since it manifests itself in him aggressively mopping dirty water towards Kieran's shoes, Kieran feels more embarrassed for Liam than anything else, thinking 'Christ, he could let the guy have this one, if he needed it that badly'. Another blood-freezing example was when Kieran found the half-completed list that his father had written for therapy, an exercise to try and stop himself blaming one child for the death of the other. The descriptions of the sea and the sculpture of The Survivors are also incredibly atmospheric. And more than that, The Survivors is a fascinating exploration of trauma on a small community.

Years ago, I worked in a school in a town in which a high profile murder had taken place twelve years before. The young girl's body was never found and her killer has never admitted his guilt. It was really startling to notice how deep ran the fault-lines from this one event. Several children in my class believed that the girl's memorial tree in the school garden was in fact her grave. Staff members recalled having their cars stopped and searched during the investigation. A colleague who had been the same age as the victim told stories about how they had been friends and had walked to school together, even once claiming to have raised the alarm on the day of her disappearance ... until under pressure she would admit that they had not even gone to the same school.

More alarmingly, several years after I left the area, I spotted in the news that one of my ex-pupils had also gone missing. She turned up several days later absolutely fine. She had been fighting with her parents and had hidden out at a friend's house to scare them. She is not even the first girl from that town to pull that trick. It is disturbing to realise how these children were born into this grieving community and have grown up to harness their parents' trauma against them. Over in Evelyn Bay, they too have their wounds. Tensions rise and the drama plays out in a Facebook-esque forum. Everyone is defined for how they knew the main players in the tragedy twelve years before. They are survivors but nobody can ever forget.

So I think that The Survivors did have the ingredients to stand equal with its elder siblings. But there is still that flatness to it which meant it failed to connect. In some ways this seemed to come from Harper herself, who seems to make an appearance in the form of a visiting crime writer G R Barlin (he who destroyed Ash's granny's garden). Kieran observes that he likes Barlin's novels, as they 'were the kind of thrillers people bought in the airport, stayed glued to beside the pool and then left in their hotel room to save on luggage weight. They sold by the shedload'. Another character Lyn remarks, 'I did read a book once. Wasn't for me'. Later one of the other characters advises trying Barlin's writing to which Lyn bites back, 'Only the early ones though. Don't bother with the rest'. Yet the way in which Barlin tells Kieran, 'Writers' block is for amateurs … I do this for a living.' made me wonder - is this Harper commenting on her own experience of working through a lack of inspiration. It would make sense.

But all this implies that Harper is more cynical about her achievements as a writer than she ought to be. I have reread both The Dry and The Lost Man and will probably look at them both again - they are more than mere thrillers. Harper has an unmatched gift for conveying place so that her books have more to give than just their plots; highly unusual for crime fiction. More forlorn than failure, The Survivors perhaps is the book that you leave in the hotel room at the end of the holiday. But I will be back for more Jane Harper when she comes around again and look forward to the next adventure.

Jane Harper is an auto-buy author for me as her crime novels are always perfectly crafted. In The Survivors, the author plots a small-town murder mystery with ties to long-buried secrets. The exquisite characters and their complicated relationships make this a richly-detailed story that completely engages the reader. The claustrophobic atmosphere heightens the tension, slowly building a sense of suspicion and fear until the truth is finally revealed. If you're looking for a clever and well-plotted mystery then this book is definitely for you!

The Survivors by Jane Harper
Publishers: Little, Brown Book Group
Publication Date 21/1/21

NO SPOILERS
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Highly Recommended

Beautifully written slow burner of a book. The aftermath of a devastating storm, some 12 years before, with tragic consequences, sets the tone for a story of guilty secrets and the feeling everyone is hiding something.
I loved the Tasmanian setting and the feeling of tension which builds up throughout. The ending was good.
I’d like to thank the author, publisher and netgalley for providing me with this advance digital copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

Great book. Had me hooked right from the beginning trying to guess what had happened and who was responsible. Had no idea in the end. Well written and thoroughly recommend

Having loved Jane Harper’s superb debut The Dry and The Lost Man I had high high hopes for The Survivors. This novel takes us to a small beach town in Tasmania and once again the location is a very strong element throughout the novel and while she captures that small town feel perfectly I didn’t feel that sense of place quite as deeply as I felt the outback in her previous novels. While the characters are well defined and Jane’s writing flows as beautifully as ever I felt the mystery at the heart of this story lacked the tension, suspense and atmosphere of her previous books and the sense of urgency was missing for me here. As usual there are plenty of red herrings throughout to throw you off the scent but I felt those possibilities could have been used to better effect and fleshed out a bit more. Ultimately the “reveal” and the ending felt a bit flat to me and I think this book could definitely have benefited from a prologue as it just.. ends. I did love how she used The Survivors throughout the novel, anchoring the story to the place, the past, the present and the central characters all at once. Jane is a superb author but she set the bar so high with her first novel and unfortunately this fell short of that for me but it’s still a cracking read and I would recommend it all the same.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for this ARC I’m exchsnge for an honest review,

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this book to review.

I have read all of Jane Harper’s books so far and have loved every one of them...this latest one did not disappoint.

It’s quite slow-burning but it didn’t make me lose interest once. I enjoyed the small-town costal setting, and the two inter-linking timelines. I did think I’d worked out the ending at one point...but I was wrong.

The descriptions of The Survivors and the caves was so well done & claustrophobic...I found myself holding my breath at times.

I have already recommended this book and I can’t wait for the next one.

I loved the haunting setting for this book. A brutal storm tore through an Australian town and 12 years later the aftershocks are still being felt.

Absolutely loved this book.
The amazing quality of Jane Harper’s writing means that any place she writes about really does become real in the reader’s imagination. In The Dry and The Lost Man, it was the incredible heat of the outback. In this book, I could hear the waves and see the coastline.
This is a slow burn thriller – characters and motives are slowly revealed but the book is all the more enjoyable for that.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown Book Group UK for a preview copy.

Jane Harper never disappoints! Much like her previous books, The Dry and The Lost Man, this focuses a lot on the pressure and drama surrounding a close knit community but this time our action takes place in a coastal town.
This is the type of book you read in one sitting, impossible to put down.

Many thanks to Net Galley, Little, Brown Book Group UK and the author for a chance to read this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

The Survivors is an intense tale of friendship, love, haunting memories, grief and guilt and as always with Jane Harper’s novels the atmosphere she creates with the stories.

Jane Harper, I believe is a magician who skilfully weaves a mystery using an element of nature as the central character in the story. In The Dry, it was the dry and arid drought hit Kiewarra, The Force Of Nature had the dense and rugged wilderness of Giralang Ranges, in The Lost Man, the outback Queensland takes centre stage and now The Survivors has the sea of Evelyn Bay as the primary character. I have been incredibly lucky to have read all the novels that has been so far published and have to say this, the writing is simply phenomenal.

Mind you, if you are diving into the story expecting a fast-paced thriller, you will be disappointed. All her books are slow-driven mysteries which tend to give a feel of nothing much happening but as the end chapter roll in, the heart is in the mouth and the reader is left gasping for breath.

A storm like never before, worse than expected and the wreckage that it left in its wake is irredeemable. 12 years later, a girl has been murdered not far from Kieran’s home and every nightmare that has been running rampant in the small town is kicking again. There’s a haunting vibe in the story as Kieran, his parents, Sean, Mia, Ash and Olivia all struggle personally with losses and guilt. The secondary characters like the author George and Trish as Gabby’s mother have all been characterized well. It needn’t be said how exceptional Jane Harper is coz the reader is instantly transported to Evelyn Bay with its raging seas, waves, the dark caves, the dangerous cliffs and the claustrophobic town with suspicious stones being thrown at all and sundry.

An extremely compelling read that deserves all the accolades. Highly recommended!

This review is published in my blog https://rainnbooks.com/, Goodreads, Amazon India and Twitter.

I expected a little more from this book given the hype it has received as one to watch in 2021 and perhaps that's why I only gave it 3 stars.

4 of 5 stars
https://lynns-books.com/2021/02/01/the-survivors-by-jane-harper/
My Five Word TL:DR Review : Small Seaside Village, Big Secrets

Well, this was my first Harper novel but it certainly won’t be my last. To be honest, I went into this expecting a mystery and of course, essentially, this is a murder mystery but I was so pleased to find that there was much more to this than a regular whodunnit. In fact there are so many impressive elements.

Harper successfully brings together a winning combination of excellent setting, deep character studies and slowly but surely mounting tension in a story that combines tragedy both past and present.

Kieran Elliot left his childhood home over 10 years ago not long after the death of his brother and close friend during an unexpectedly tempestuous storm. He blamed himself for the tragedy and unable to live with the guilt left Evelyn Bay. As the story begins Kieran has returned with his wife and new baby to help his parents move out. Obviously this return is fraught with nerves to begin with and so when the body of a young woman is found in the sea the paranoia really goes into overdrive.

In no particular order here are the things that worked really well for me.

The fact that this has a great setting. Evelyn Bay, on the south coast of Tasmania, is a small seaside village and summertime tourist hotspot. On the face of it this is a tight knit community but lurking beneath the surface is a seething hotbed of secrets, petty jealousies and resentments just waiting to boil over. The coast is scattered with small bays and caves with underground caverns just begging to be explored. Unfortunately most of these caves become fully immersed during high tide so that, coupled with the possibility of becoming lost in the myriad tunnels is a high risk. Storm surges and sudden swells are also not unknown in fact Evelyn Bay has it’s very own sunken ship and a bronze statue that stands in the water known as The Survivors, is a testament to the dangers here.

The investigation that takes place pretty soon becomes tied to events that occurred 12 years ago during the disastrous storm and before long everyone seems to have something new to add to the story. I loved the way that we flit between the past and the present. It shows us people in such a different light, we can see people 12 years ago, look at their relationships and see how they’ve coped with tragedy, loss and guilt. Time has a way of altering perspectives just as death sometimes makes people see the dead through rose tinted glasses. This murder becomes the catalyst to uncover what really happened during that storm.

The characters are just really superb. Their emotions, motivations and actions come across really well as does the dialogue and on top of that I enjoyed Kieran’s narration.

Basically, and I’m not going to elaborate too much further, this is something of a slow burn, and that really isn’t a criticism. I loved the way the author teases out the elements of the story, throwing in red herrings along the way. She creates the most fantastic atmosphere and describes things beautifully.

This isn’t a fast and furious murder mystery but it has plenty of intrigue, a great setting and an impressive cast. I thoroughly enjoyed The Survivors and will definitely look out for more work by Jane Harper.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.

My rating 4 stars

Starting with the positives, the world building in The Survivors is great. The sense of atmosphere that the author was going for, I feel was definitely achieved, and that alone kept me reading to the end when I would otherwise have given up. Another positive is some of the characterisation. I could easily picture Lyn, Verity and Renn, but aside from those characters, everyone else including the protagonist and his girlfriend had less personality than a supreme court judge on a mortuary slab.

The negatives of this book mostly come down to one main problem: the structure.
This book has no suspense whatsoever. In order to achieve suspense, you need to give your main character a goal, have stakes for that goal (a good reason they need to achieve it) and conflict that's presented by the villain or whatever the story's antagonist is. That's what builds tension and suspense. The protagonist, Kieran, had no goal, not even on a scene level, until 95% into the book, and that's not an exaggeration. Every day he spends at his parents' home, he just wanders around with his girlfriend and kid, with the aim of nothing more than settling his baby to sleep. Everything that happens in the plot happens in spite of him and to him, and by pure chance. Nothing that he does pushes the plot forward. Hell, barely anything the other characters do pushes the plot forward either. The whole middle of the book is stagnant and every time something sinister is hinted at and used as a cliff hanger, the reveal turns out to be something totally mundane that still doesn't move the plot.

Going back to the problem with the structure. The book has somewhat of a hook, though it's completely deflated when it's revealed soon after it's introduced to have been blown out of all proportion (Kieran killed someone?!! Nope, he was just involved in an accident whereupon two people died. Not his fault). Then, I guess the inciting incident is supposed to be Bronte's death. But the problem here is Bronte's death incites nothing. The protagonist barely acknowledges it happened - he didn't even know her and is not a suspect... no one he even cares about is immediately a suspect so it doesn't matter to him. He goes about his life happily trying to get his baby daughter to sleep by walking around the seaside town just as he had done every day before the murder and doesn't ever do anything to investigate why Bronte died.

Because there are no stakes in the game for Kieran after the 'inciting incident,' there's no debate that he has to go through, and no break into two. In fact, the book is just one huge act one without there ever being a break into two. There's no upside down world, because again, Kieran just continues his life as normal with no change and no 'stasis = death' force propelling him into a plan of action. There's no fun and games, no pinch points, no hint whatsoever at the lingering and building threat of the antagonist... the whole thing just flatlines from Bronte's death until the last few chapters when Kieran somewhat unbelievably figures out the solution to a very convoluted mystery that has flimsy logic at best.

Most of the characters are unnecessary. Why was Ash in the book? Why waste so much time talking about some random author's dug up garden, when the only relevant part he played was to impart a tiny piece of information to the police which started the ball rolling on the mystery being figured out? That information could have come from any character willing to do the little bit of investigation he did, so he wasn't necessary to the story.

The worst part about the book to me, was the fact the author had the nerve to make fun of the reader by pretty much saying 'I bet you thought the author's garden was going to turn out to be relevant huh, like it was going to contain the dead body of the missing girl... but nope. It's just a massive, pointless red herring that I used to make it seem like the plot was going somewhere for 50% of the book. Suck it.' The thing about red herrings, is they need to be relevant in some way, even though it's not in the way the reader expects. You can't just throw crap onto the page that means nothing at all and then not have it lead anywhere. That's unacceptable for an author of this stature who should know better.

Well, this is my last read by Jane Harper. If you suddenly forget how to structure a novel - especially a thriller - halfway through your writing career, then at least your editor should have called you out on it. But apparently these days editors are as pointless as half the characters and events are in this book.

A generous 2*

Jane Harper has become a must read author for me. I’ve been lucky enough to have received review copies for her previous books (The Dry, Force of Nature and The Lost Man), and really enjoyed them all.

If you’re familiar with her work, The Survivors is most similar to The Lost Man. Rather than being involved in some sort of investigation, here we follow Kieran who met the victim and who’s brother died several years earlier.

Jane Harper is brilliant at writing the feel of a small town. The sort of place where everybody know everybody, and everyone has opinions on each other. An accident and a disappearance left a big hole in the town, and the death of a young woman brought all those emotions right back to the fore front.

While the story line is based in the present day, throughout we get flashbacks to previous events which slowly helps us slowly piece together exactly what happened on that fateful day. I will say that those time jumps were at times confusing as it wasn’t obvious when that happened. However, there may be some formatting in the final edition which solves that issue.

I loved the way these two time lines were linked together. They were two seemingly separate events, but which really tells the story of the local people’s thoughts and feelings towards each other.

As always from Jane Harper, this is a fantastic mystery, on a fantastic backdrop of a small town on the coast of Australia.

The Survivors by Jane Harper – publishing 21 jan 21

Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that haunts him still resurfaces during a visit with his young family, to the small coastal town he once called home.

Sadly, I did not like this book at all. I did not feel anything for the characters, which in my opinion were not likeable. There was just too much information at the same time and jumping back and forward a lot of the time really did not help it. I, as a result, did not finish this book.

2 stars

Oh yes, another excellent book from Jane Harper. She's becoming one of my favourite authors and I was delighted to receive an advance copy of this book.

This book is based in Evelyn Bay, a small coastal town in Tasmania. Kieran and Mia have returned to the town to help Kieran’s mother pack up their house to move his father to a home as his dementia has been increasing rapidly. His memory is very bad and he escapes the house to wander around the beach a lot. It’s impossible to keep an eye on him at all times. Kieran hasn’t been back to the town since the fateful storm and tragedy that took place 12 years previously. Two people died that night, Kieran’s brother Finn and Toby, Liam’s dad. A young girl, Gabby, Olivia’s younger sister, just 14, also disappeared that night, and has never been found. Then another body is found on the beach. Obviously parallels are drawn between the deaths and the story revolves around these events past and present. I couldn't put the book down, it wove a wonderful story, dark at times through the emotions of many of the townsfolk with a resolution I hadn't seen coming.

I'd like to thank NetGalley, the author and the publishers for an advance copy of this excellent book in exchange for an honest review. It's a marvellous story - buy it, you won't regret it!