5 Star Review: Force of Nature

We're halfway through the year, and I just read my second 5 star-worthy book of the year, Force of Nature by Jane Harper.  (The first was "What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw" by Leah Stewart, and you can read more of my thoughts on that here.)  "Force of Nature" was a terrific literary mystery, and was such a can't put it down kind of book that I kept sneaking away from my family to read it, and stayed up late reading too.  I read the whole thing in about 24 hours!

In my post a few weeks ago on mysteries, one of the books that I singled out was "The Dry" by Jane Harper, which also made my 2017 Top 10 list.  Well, I'm happy to say that her follow up book was even better!  "Force of Nature" has the same main character as "The Dry," a federal police investigator in Australia's financial crimes division named Aaron Falk.  Although it is a sequel, the mystery is totally a standalone, so you can definitely read this one without having read "The Dry" first.  However, if you like to read literary mysteries, I definitely recommend reading both of them, and if you're going to do that, you might as well read them in order.

"Force of Nature" is also set in Australia, where a group of 5 women from a company are forced to go on a corporate retreat involving a 3 day wilderness hiking and camping trip , but on the 3rd day, only 4 return.  The missing woman was secretly helping Falk and his partner with obtaining documents to build a case against the firm, so even though it wouldn't otherwise be in their jurisdiction, they go to the nature preserve area to help with the search.  The book alternates between Falk's perspective in the days following the disappearance, and rotates between POVs of the 5 women during the 3 days they were out in the wilderness.  The hike was tense right from the start, so it's a very suspenseful read.

The book also manages to pull off an ending that was surprising - at least for me - while also satisfying, and without some crazy "gotcha" twist.  It's a tricky thing to do with a mystery or thriller - sometimes if I don't guess the ending in advance, it's because it's something that would be impossible to guess or is just something implausible, and that's irritating.  On the other hand, while figuring out the answer to a mystery before the characters do can be satisfying, it can also be annoying when you figure it out too early in the book.  Sometimes just knowing a book has a twist makes you guess the twist too early which in a weird way ruins the fun.  ("We Were Liars" and "The Wife Between Us" are two examples of that for me in the last few years.)  "Force of Nature," on the other hand, was just a really satisfying mystery.

You definitely learn less about the character of Aaron Falk than you did in "The Dry," which I suppose is a good reason to read that one first, but the character stuff both on his side and regarding the women on the trip is all good, and the book is also very well written.  All in all, a great book and I highly recommend!


If anyone is curious, I've amazingly already read 65 books this year, so with just 2 out of 65 books meriting 5 out of 5 stars, you can see that I'm pretty choosy about awarding 5 stars.  I've given 13 books 4.5 stars so far this year, though, so I guess I do love a lot of what I've read.  Choosing my top 10 this year will be challenging if I keep going at this rate!  But "Force of Nature" will definitely be on the Top 10 list, so you heard it here first!