ARC Review - Publish Date August 29, 2023
Author: Lucy Clarke
Series: Stand Alone
Category: Thriller
Spice: 🌶️
"The mountains give away none of their secrets. Yet out there, hidden within their granite folds, someone knows exactly how this woman died. And why."
A couple of pages is all it took for me to be invested in The Hike, there was so much foreboding I was anxious from the get-go.
Four lifelong best friends decide for their yearly vacation that they are going on a four day's long hike in the Norwegian wilderness. Four women who have previously spent their annual trip on a beach or by the pool. Only one of them had even been somewhat training for their adventure. Yeah, this trip wasn't ever going to go well for them, even without the murder.
Liz, Helena, Maggie, and Joni are in varying degrees of a midlife crisis and use this trip as an excuse to distract them from their own problems. Honestly, I felt like they all were kind of awful, each making mistakes and deliberate choices.
Liz chose and planned the trip, and did not let any reasonable doubt or concern get in the way of going. She was incredibly self-centered and knowingly withheld information, putting her friends at risk several times just so that they would go climb Blafjell with her.
"Maybe she was having a midlife crisis. That could be it. Some people embarked on an affair or bought a sports car - while she bullied her friends into going wild camping in the wilderness." - Liz
Helena was maybe my favorite of the four friends, though she made just as many bad decisions as they did, both in her life back home and while in Norway. Her character was the most unforgiving and she felt stuck up at times.
"She laughed at the absurdity of it. Her, Helena Hall, going wild camping in Norway!" - Helena
Maggie was such a difficult character to feel sorry for because she felt so sorry for herself. She was the stereotypical whiny, wet blanket of the group but also went through the greatest character development, so her character was bearable by the end.
"This wild was dizzying. It was too much. Too big. She felt suddenly panicky, like she'd made a terrible mistake." - Maggie
Joni, the wild child, was so free but trapped by her fame. She might have been the most desperate of them to get away from her problems but was unable to run from her demons in the end.
"She was filled with disgust and shame and a seething self-hatred, violent enough to feel as if she were ripping open." - Joni
The Hike is written in multiple POVs and it did get tiresome. Though they all had distinct voices, I still found myself forgetting whose head I was in.
Almost everyone in the book is a suspect, and it seems like you can’t even trust your friends. There were so many twists and turns, I never knew what to expect next. I'd recommend The Hike to anyone who enjoys thrillers with a splash of drama and plenty of outdoorsy adventure.
*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Tropes and Themes: Thriller, Mystery, Small Town, Betrayal.
Blurb
Wish you were here?
Think again . . .
Maggie, Liz, Helena & Joni. Old friends bound by history, adventures, old secrets.
And now, bound by murder.
They lace up their hiking boots for the adventure of a lifetime in the Norwegian wilderness: a place of towering mountains, glass-like lakes, log cabins and forests stolen from a fairytale.
It’s the perfect place to lose yourself – until a broken body is found at the bottom of a ravine.
Somewhere out there, someone knows exactly why a woman has died. And in this deep, dark wilderness, there’s a killer on the trail . . .
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