I enjoyed ‘The Survivors’ by Jane Harper but not as much as her previous novels. I absolutely loved ‘The Dry’ Whilst this new novel is in the same vein it just didn’t feel as plausible and the reveal wasn’t as shocking Nevertheless it was a good read.

The Survivors is a sculpture in the sea by an old wreck and also those who survive a terrible storm over ten years ago including Kieran Elliott. His return home to Evelyn Bay in Tasmania opens up old wounds especially as more tragedy befalls the small coastal community.

This is a story of grief, guilt and blame which weighs heavily on people and this is depicted really well and at times, very movingly. As you would expect from Jane Harper this is extremely well written and is an excellent portrait of a small community with suspicion hanging over it and the devastation that can cause. There are tantalising hints about the past and events in the present in this slow burner of a novel. In places I find the pace is a bit too slow in the first 50% but the pace increases in the second half as the mystery deepens and mistrust strengthens. This half makes for gripping reading as you really don’t know who to trust, who to believe and you cast your eye over everyone. I think the outcome is a good surprise and fits well with those tantalising hints! I love the atmosphere that the author creates using the weather to great effect and especially the past storm, she uses the ebb and flow of the cold ocean to symbolise the attitudes of the inhabitants of Evelyn Bay. This really resonates with me and it is as if you are actually present on the shore. I love the use of the dangerous caves which hide as much as the people do and are an excellent metaphor for submerged secrets. The character development is really good especially in Kieran’s family and you feel so much is weighing on his mother Verity's shoulders.

Overall, despite my thoughts on the first part this is a really good, exceptionally well written and atmospheric slow burner with a fantastic setting in Tasmania, which I recommend.

With thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

I didn't love this as I'd hoped,and that may well be because Jane Harper has given me such expectations for her books.
It was a decent crime novel,a murder,a mystery and whole lot of family guilt.
It was just quite slow to start,and I didn't feel much tension .
The last few chapters really picked up the pace,and three up some more mysteries before being explained away

I am a Jane Harper fan and I was delighted to get the opportunity to read and review #TheSurvivors thanks to @NetGalley, the publishers and the author. (Thank you!)
I am always recommending her earlier books and this was not a disappointment. Set in Tasmania in a beach-side holiday town (a departure from her usual Outback setting) the novel is atmospheric, tense and sometimes heart stopping.
The main character, Keiran Elliot, is believable and likeable. A mistake he made when he was a teenager has had a devastating impact on his life, his relationships and his view of the world. This is the story of his return to his hometown with his partner and baby and how he reluctantly has to revisit the awful accident and come to terms what what happened. I was intrigued and couldn't put the book down.
Always well written, full of suspense and with characters who have depth, Jane Harper's books do not disappoint. I thoroughly recommend this one and can't wait to see what she will write next.

Jane Harper gives us another gripping thriller with so many strands of investigation. Is there a link between a missing girl and the murder of another girl in a small town in Tasmania? Harper also gives layers of interest by depicting relationships between old friends and families in the aftermath of tragedy. As usual the natural environment of the novel’s setting plays a key role in the unfolding of events. Fans of Harper will not be disappointed .

Another great book by Jane Harper.
Kieran has returned home with his partner and baby to help his mother move house.
Things are going ok until a waitress is found murdered and this opens up old wounds and memories of a tragic accident in Kieran’s past.
His dad is suffering from dementia and seems to have been out ‘wandering’ when the girl was killed but he can’t remember a thing. He does remember the death of another girl many years before and seems to become confused with the two incidents.
Kieran and his friends are shocked by the murder and can’t believe someone they know could have done this.
This is a great mystery thriller that keeps you guessing and I was surprised by the outcome.
This is a very atmospheric book with some great descriptions of the sea and caves.
Thanks to Little Brown Book Group and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

A change of scene for Jane Harper fans from the heat of the Australian outback to the Southern Tasmanian coastline, The Survivors is set in Evelyn Bay, a small beach resort. Kieran Elliot, his partner Mia and baby return to their home town to help his mother move house, when the subsequent murder of a waitress opens up old wounds and memories of a tragic accident in his past.. Having thoroughly enjoyed Harpers 3 previous novels, I had high expectations for this one. Unfortunately, this was a huge disappointment for me. There was nothing new or novel in what was a very tired and jaded plot line; Main character returns home under a cloud - murder takes place - town reveals dark secrets - main character ends up solving crime etc etc. This is a genre which has featured in many crime novels recently such as Chris Hammers Silver, for example, and it just did not work here. Most of the characters were bland, somewhat tedious and one dimensional. There was no sense of tension throughout the novel which lacked pace and atmosphere. 2 stars from me.

Many Thanks to @netgalley and Pan McMillan for this ARC in return for my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown for the ARC of this book.


Jane Harper is fast becoming one of my favourite authors and I will definitely continue to read everything she publishes. Each of her books has had a different setting in a different Australian landscape and they are so atmospheric and perfectly evocative of the setting. Her brilliance at conjuring the sense of place works to make her books thoroughly immersive. It is a real skill.

Harper is also brilliant at creating realistic characters with difficult pasts committing small wrong doings with big impacts. The crimes are believable and it is easy to understand how normal people end up in tricky situations. Harper is also very deft at peppering red herrings and misdirections throughout her books to get your mind working and make you speculate (mostly wrongly) about what might have happened.

‘The Survivors’ is set in a coastal town in Tasmania. It follows Kieran Elliott as he returns to his childhood home 12 years after a storm took the lives of three residents, an accident for which he feels responsible. A day after his return another person ends up drowned and this crime brings up lots of secrets from the day of the storm.

I really enjoyed this book, the characters are relatable, the setting is perfect and the ending is surprising, although it ends a bit abruptly and I would have liked to see reactions to the final revelations from more of the townsfolk. I felt it dragged slightly in the second half, but that may have been because I was so keen to get to the conclusion and find out what really happened. I liked the main character Kieran and his girlfriend, Mia and enjoyed reading about their relationship.

I would highly recommend this and Harper’s other books, particularly ‘The Lost Man’.

I've never read a Jane Harper before and have always promised myself that I would. Now I have and I was delighted. She writes beautifully realised characters, their mannerisms feeling and sounding so very genuine. Like the waves in her book, I was pulled gently in and before I knew it I was powerless and swept away by the story. I'll definitely be reading her again!

Kieran, his wife Mia and baby daughter Audrey gone to Evelyn Bay. Keiran hasn't got all good memories from his childhood there, and to make things worse a young girl is found dead.

I have read all of Jane Harper's books and loved them all. This book I really enjoyed but it didn't quite wow me like her previous books but is still worthy of a solid four stars.

The story is a slow burner. Set in a coastal village with it's small community the story unfolds in the now and the past. The story plods on and eventually things do all come together and combine.

If you like fast paced then you won't get it from the book. The story drew me in and I very much wanted to see how it was going to turn out. I didn't predict the how or why and my feelings and suspicions were going a totally different way. For me there wasn't a big twist although the ending did finish the story.

I enjoyed this book very much and will continue to read books by this author. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review the book.

Jane Harper's previous crime novels are among my favourite and I will always read her books. This one had some absolutely brilliant stuff - she is a master at weaving plot lines and creating that small town secrets from the past disturbing the present kind of story. I loved the relationship between Keiran and his mother, and the author character. The only let down for me was the ending. I literally swiped again to turn the page and it was over, no more pages. I guess I just expected more story and some resolutions after the reveal of the killer, so it felt abrupt to me. But definitely worth a read and like I said, I will always read and recommend Jane Harper.

I was excited to read this book, and that was purely down to hype! I started reading this book, a bit in the dark about the storyline and the type of direction it would take, but I loved it.

Jane Harper has a way of hooking you into characters and their personalities, and feelings. Kieran and Mia were like me, I could be either of them - returning to my childhood home town with secrets that everyone knew, a new city life, and knowing the secrets of others too. I related to them on so many levels, it made me so invested in this story - and how two worlds collided to bring up the past and solve things that had been left in the dark for so many years.

You should read this book - it's dark, moody, colourful and wonderfully written.


Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for ARC.

Jane Harper's The Dry was, simply put, the best crime debut novel I've ever read, and I can't come up with enough superlatives for her most recent book, The Lost Man, which in many ways transcended the crime genre (a phrase which, I realise,, may imply that crime, and genre fiction generally, is something you can 'transcend' from to the higher echelons of literary fiction. Rather, I mean that it was the very best example of crime fiction combined with literary drama). I say all this to explain how very high my hopes were for The Survivors but, unfortunately, those hopes were not met. Had I not read Harpers previous books, I think I'd probably have enjoyed it as a decent crime novel that weaves in family tensions and small town dramas. But compared to those books, it just didn't come close in terms of feeling engaged with the characters.

I absolutely adored Jane Harper's previous books - like I loved them!!!
Although, this one was a real let down!
It was far too long, and took a long time to get going.
Plus I felt there were so many characters I couldn't really connect to any of them. They felt very one dimensional (something that Harper's previous novels definitely didn't!!)

I didn't find the plot to be original and fresh either - even though Harper's other books were completely original!!

I just think the pacing was off, and if the book was a good 100/150 pages shorter I think this would have helped it to be a 'page turner'.

I'm so gutted with this as I have so much love for this author, but this book just fell flat for me.

I really enjoy reading Jane Harper books and I was delighted to receive a copy of her new book The Survivors.
Kieran has travelled to his home town with his parter Mia and their new baby to visit his parents.
He is uncomfortable there because of an incident that happened twelve years ago that still haunts him.
While he is there a young student is found drowned on the beach and this brings back memories of the tragedy and there is a lot of gossip and suspicion of each other in the town.
A slow moving mystery which some memorable characters.
That you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have now read all four of Jane Harper's novels, and although my favourite is The Lost Man, The Survivors is a close-run second. Once again, with a few lines of her pen, Harper vividly creates the characters who make up her latest small Australian community setting. Evelyn Bay in Tasmania, a seaside town for summer people, is beautifully evoked, as its the sense of brokenness, the aftermath of a terrible tragedy that overtook the inhabitants ten years before the novel opens. She cleverly weaves past and present together and, as ever, once I got going I put real life on hold, unable to set the book down. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of an incomer who's a bestselling writer!

Jane Harper knows how to create atmosphere and setting in her books! We've left the desert of Australia of previous books and are now in a coastal town in Tasmania. It's a site where a boat sinking occurred years earlier which caused the town such tragedy and pain. That lingering pain and grief - guilt - is what comes to light in the novel and it's a whirl of a novel, a riptide of emotions getting there.

Slower in pace and not as urgent as her other novels, this moves at a slower pace and is not about 'who done it' but rather how everyone has coped with it since. There's is a mystery of who the guilty party really is but I didn't see that as the main premise of the book. It wasn't for me anyway.

Not as much impact as previous works - more of a slow burn character study but it was still pure spun Harper gold.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for a review copy of The Survivors, a stand-alone set in the fictional Tasmanian town of Evelyn Bay.

Kieran along with his wife, Mia, and baby daughter, Audrey return to Evelyn Bay to help his mother empty her house in preparation for a move. It’s difficult for him as 12 years earlier his brother and his friend died at sea, trying to save him. Now a body has been found and old secrets, resentments and feelings are stirred up.

I really wanted to like this novel as the premise is so interesting, but it’s not really my thing and it failed to hold my attention. I found it easy to put down and not too difficult to leave down. There are many reasons for that, chiefly because it is slow and anything but a crime novel. Yes, there is a crime and that burbles away in the background but mostly it is an examination of guilt and the long shadows cast by the past.

The novel is told from Kieran’s point of view and slips between the present and his memories of that day 12 years ago when he made a mistake and his brother died. I’m not saying he isn’t right to be burdened by guilt but I am saying it doesn’t interest me. I don’t feel he is nuanced enough as a character for me to feel his pain. The novel gradually unfolds the link between the present and the past. There is little suspense, more a general feeling of foreboding that doesn’t come to pass. Is that it? was my response to the denouement.

The plot is probably too literary for me as I like events, reveals and a sense of excitement in my reading. I do, however, think that the novel excelled itself in its small town setting and descriptions. There’s that sense of the left behind or settling in the characters, those that didn’t have the ambition to spread their wings and move away, the dependence on tourism, the lack of investment and the community that isn’t so much when under scrutiny.

The Survivors will appeal to many readers, just not me.

I look forward to a new novel from Jane Harper and am hugely pleased to have received a review copy from Netgalley. And indeed this is another gripping mystery with a strong sense of place being set on the Tasmanian coast.

Kieran, Mia and their baby Audrey return to their home town to help Kieran's mother pack up the house before her husband, who is now suffering from dementia, moves into a care home. Very soon a young woman is killed and all the inhabitants of this small town are drawn into the mystery. The small town atmosphere of a coastal community is well-drawn and the narrative speeds along, I didn't want to put the book down. I thought I'd guessed the killer early on, but was wrong - always pleasing to be surprised but I do think there were more red herrings to throw the reader off the scent rather than clues to lead us to the right answer.

Overall though I've given 4 rather than 5 starts because good as this is (and it is a good read) it doesn't match up to The Dry or The Lost Man. In fact I found the early parts of the book dealing with the secret about Kieran that means some of the townsfolk shun him very similar to the same storyline in The Lost Man with the slow reveal that comes some time later. The novel is as much about Kieran coming to terms with what happened as it is about solving the young woman's death.

So not Jane Harper's best, but definitely recommended as even when she's at 4 stars she's streets ahead of a lot of authors.

Alas, figuring out the murderer's identity in the first 15% made this book kind of a drag.
Having highly enjoyed Jane Harper's The Lost Man, The Survivors felt by comparison vaguely uninspired. While the setting is just as atmospheric and vividly rendered as the ones in Harper's other novels, the characters and mystery were very run-of-the-mill. In many ways it reminded me of Tana French's latest novel, The Searcher: we have a not-so-young-anymore male protagonist who thinks he is a regular Joe and a crime forces him to reconsider his past behaviour/actions/attitudes. The Survivors begins with a juicy prologues that is meant to intrigue readers but I was not particularly lured by it. A lot of the dynamics in this novel seemed a rehash of the ones from The Lost Man and The Dry. Our protagonist, Kieran, returns to his small coastal hometown where a violent crime brings to light secrets from his own past. Kieran is happily married and a new father, and there were a lot of scenes featuring him being a soft dad and they just did nothing for me. I guess they were meant to emphasise the gulf between teenage-Kieran, who acted like a typical Chad, and father-Kieran. The 'tragedy' that irrevocably changed his life did not have the same emotional heft as Nathan's family struggles in The Lost Man. Kieran tells other characters that he feels guilt-ridden but...it just didn't really come across. Anyhow, Kieran returns to his home, he catches up with two best-friends, one is a bit of a loudmouth and kind of a douchebag while the other one has always been the more sensible and mature in the trio. The discovery of a young woman's body lands the community in crisis. There is a lot finger pointing and gossip on a FB-knockoff. Kieran, who is not a detective nor a crime aficionado, wants to know what happened to this young woman as he seems to be acting under a sense of misplaced obligation towards her (and her death reminds him of his own tragedy). While he doesn't starts snooping around he's lucky enough that he happens to hear people's private conversation, which often reveal something essential to the mystery. For some bizarre reason the person who is actually officially investigating this young woman's death confides in Kieran, which...I had a hard time getting behind (job integrity? None).
Anyway, chances are you've read this kind of story before. Maybe I wouldn't have minded this type of boilerplate plot if the characters had been somewhat interesting or layered. But they remain rather one-dimensional. Dick guy acts like a dick because deep down he's insecure. The cold mother is cold because she's still suffering the loss of her son. Artistic woman fears she will never leave her 'dead-end' job and 'make' it. Kieran is they type of character who is blandly inoffensive. After the trauma he experienced and now that he is a father & husband he realises that as a teenager he acted badly. Most of the conversations he has with women seemed to exist only to make him reflect on 'toxic masculinity' and the harm caused by the 'boys will be boys' mentality. And these realisations he has about sexisms seemed forced. Also, Kieran is meant to be in his thirties...and he comes across like a middle-aged man. I understand that there are people in their thirties who may as well be luddites but really? Kieran's voice just wasn't very convincing.
The male side characters like that writer, Kieran's friends, and that impertinent young guy, were rather dull. The female characters were so obviously meant to be 'strong' and 'empowering' but that didn't really make them into realistic or likeable characters.
The culprit was obvious, so I did not feel any real 'suspense' or curiosity. Sometimes, even if you know who did it, you can still be able to enjoy the ride...but here I just wanted to get it over and done with. The murderer was extremely underdeveloped and their explanation at the end was very Scooby Doo-ish.
All in all, this was a disappointing read. While it wasn't all that bad, and the story had at least a strong sense of place, I expected more from Harper.