Heartwood
By Amity Gaige

I remember really liking Gaige's novel "Sea Wife" which I read during the pandemic, when they finally relaxed the restrictions enough for us to take a holiday. There were no flights and small towns and villages were not happy to welcome visitors so we hunkered in our motorhome trying to be as low impact as possible. The isolation matched what I was reading about and the whole vibe felt perfect.

Gaige uses the natural world in the same way in this novel, but I just couldn't connect with it in the same way. The only character that is given any meat on the bone is Bev, and I am just not convinced by her awkward, self sacrificing stoicism. The only thing we really learn about any of the characters is their dysfunctional family dynamics. One tentative thread holds the story together, and it's a bit meh.

This is not the first book I've read set on the AT, but it might be the one that gives the least sense of place. The writing style didn't captivate me the way her previous work did. The "poetic" spirituality felt overblown and I found myself scanning through it.

I think this book would suit reader's who like wilderness settings, conspiracy theories and brooding characters.

Publication date: 1st May 2025
Thanks to #Netgalley for providing an eGalley for review purposes

What a beautiful book! I really love books told in multimedia-type ways, modern day epistolary novels with wide PoVs, and this fits beautifully.

Valerie Gillis goes missing whilst hiking The Appalachian Trail (if you're not familiar with it, you'll probably do what I did and look it up!) and we hear about the search and rescue mission in lots of different ways.

We hear from Valerie herself, in touching and sometimes brutal letters to her Mother, a journal of sorts, as she has no way of sending the letters. We hear from Game Warden, Beverly, as she puts every ounce of her determination into this search, putting her own life on hold to help save others. We hear from the mysterious Lena, in a retirement community; what is her involvement? And we also hear some interviews with Valerie's (whose trail nickname is 'Sparrow') trail mate Santo, interviews that break your heart and have you laughing at the same time.

It's a bit of whodunnit, a dash of The Hero's Journey, a shake of nature writing - this has it all. Tenderly and intriguingly told, Heartwood draws disparate characters and storylines together to show the redemptive power of love. (Sorry if that sounds cheesy, but it's true; at the heart, this is a love story, not romance, but love.)

A beautiful read - thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for giving me a copy to read and review. I'm really grateful to have read this moving story; Amity Gaige is someone to look out for!

I enjoyed this book overall but felt slightly disappointed in it. The different points of view became muddled at times and some were more drawn out.
I think Heartwood has had a lot of hype but the story doesn’t quite live up to the expectations.
Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Arc review ✨ Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Solid 4 ⭐️ read. I am not outdoorsy at all and am actually really afraid of it, so going into this book I was expecting to be uncomfortable and on edge and it did that sometimes but I think literary fiction is definitely the key genre with this one. The search for a missing hiker introduced us to many different characters but each one moved the plot forward well. I didn’t feel like such and such was just pointlessly added for word count or that it was hard to keep track of everyone. I will say some of the POVs were very slow and long winded so I did lose attention sometimes. I did not find it super thrilling as anticipated but it was well done and I was satisfied with everything.

This book is about a missing hiker on the Appalachian Trail and the story of the rescue mission to find her. The story is told from four different perspectives; the warden in charge of the rescue, the missing woman, an elderly woman in a retirement home and a fellow hiker who had been with the missing woman.
I found the different narratives very confusing at first but eventually they became clearer. I wasn't too sure what the interview with Ruben, the fellow hiker, added to the story. At times it just felt like extra padding. The relevance of the narrative involving Lena, the elderly woman, only became clear right at the end.
Whilst there were times in the story that it became interesting, hints of things not being as they should be, these tended to peter out and didn't really develop. So the story lacked the sense of thrill I thought there would have been. In addition, the pace was slow and by the end I really didn't care for the characters. An interesting read but it could have been better.

Packed full of suspense and plot twists, this book was more drama than thriller but in a good way. I really enjoyed the different perspectives, it added a layer of suspense to the unsolved mystery of Sparrow’s disappearance. I also really loved Lt Bev as a character, she was my favourite to read about. Certain plot points and characters felt a little unnecessary, and I do wish we got more answers on certain points of the plot, but overall I loved my time reading this. Gaige built this story and mystery with so much depth and detail that it felt real. A real unique book with memorable characters and great writing.

I love books about human vs nature. I enjoy suspense. I like to feel stuff. This book delivered on all fronts.

As someone who grew up in what’s tantamount to a national park, I know full well that the woods can kill you which turned the tension up to 11 for me and I read this story in mere hours. The pacing was propulsive, without being frantic. I particularly liked that there wasn’t loads of preamble, we jump right into the action. I was very drawn to Valerie and Bev and enjoyed spending time with them. The epistolary format of transcripts, DMs, articles, and narrative really brought the urgency to life for me and kept the pace tight. I was a bit skeptical of Valerie’s poetic and coherent prose the longer she spent in the woods. There’s at least one inconsistency with that: <spoilers removed>

The sense of place was awesome. I paused a couple of times to look up places mentioned (lemon squeezer, no thanks!) and could picture the forest vividly. I really liked the scenes with Badger, the search and rescue dog and learning a bit more about the mechanics of K9 rescue!

My interest waned during Lena’s backstory. I found Lena a complex but frustrating character. It took her an agonizingly long time to make a connection that I guessed around the 40% mark, and her inaction made me want to scream. We spent a lot of time on her backstory and inner angst about her daughter and I’m still not really sure why. I also didn’t really understand the purpose of taking us along for Bev’s trip to Connecticut, which took me out of Valerie’s story right at the climax and into a kind of twee family scene that felt forced.

Ultimately, I recommend this book. It’s got a great hook, a good mystery, and takes place in a unique setting. The exact genre is difficult to pinpoint and I love it for that! Also, while the North American and UK covers are wildly different, they’re both stunners!

This was my first read by this author and such a memorable one. The concept of the story caught my attention and the heady mix of emotional depth, character building, backstory and descriptive scenery brought the story together.

I enjoyed this book, a perfect read for Christmastime. I enjoyed the mystery. I would try another book by this author. Thank you for the ARC.

What an interesting and emotional read! I loved how there were multiple points of view from different points in time. It just really worked, Valerie's pov was especially moving, the poetic, beautiful language that was used really gives you a sense of the character that she is.

I'd highly recommend this book, it reads almost like a nonfiction, which I think is credit to the author. It's gripping and beautiful.

Valerie Gillis - A 42 year old hiker, reported missing on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.
Beverley - the female game warden tasked with co-ordinating the search.
Lena - A wheelchair bound retiree who has a sneaking suspicion that the guy she's speaking to on social media knows more than he should about the missing hiker.

Three narratives all of them spellbinding, deftly wove this novel together as the days passed and still the searchers returned with nothing. Superb scene setting laid bare the stunning beauty of the wilderness and a compelling narrative that portrayed the immense planning that went on behind the scenes to co-ordinate the search, interview others who'd been in contact with Valerie on the trail, support the family and brief the media

This was a compelling read from start to finish, never letting up and impossible to put down as the narrative seamlessly moved between each of the women, keeping the suspense going right to its gripping conclusion.

My thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the advance copy, all opinions expressed are my own.

I was first drawn to this book by the similarity to a real-life story I had heard about many years ago, that of Gerry Largay, who got lost on the Appalachian Trail back in 2013. This piqued my interest and although, as the author states, some details are borrowed from Gerry’s story, this is not Gerry’s story. This is Valerie’s, and Lena’s, and Bev’s. The three threads expertly wind through this book, giving you the life stories of these three women and how they are pulled together by Valerie’s disappearance. Beautifully written and evocative, this is not a thriller, but a literary novel of survival and, surprisingly enough, the relationship between mothers and daughters.

This is a well written mystery with a beautiful setting..

Set in Maine ..Valerie Gillis is treking and 200 miles from her final destination she disappears.. Valerie is an experienced trekker so the mystery of her whereabouts is something quite odd.

Beverley has been set with the task to find Valerie. Then there is Lena an avid birdwatcher amd amateur sleuth who enjoys chatting on the internet..she has a 'friend' who seems to know more than they should anout Valerie and so the mystery turns into somthing else.

I really enjoyed the plot and was happy that I could not guess how the ending would pan out. it is filled with suspense is a book I would recommend..