The quick cut: Two cousins try to mend their broken friendship a year after a traumatic incident by backpacking through the Utah desert. Things to awry when their supplies run low and they find themselves not as alone as they thought.
A real review:
In today's consistently connected society, it can be healthy to take a moment to disconnect by spending time in nature. However, nature isn't always as safe as we like to think it is. For cousins Aster and Katie, this is very true when they decide to backpack through the Utah desert.
Aster and Katie used to be the best of friends, but a traumatic incident one year ago left their relationship in disrepair. In order to get back to the bond they've shared before, they decide to take a backpacking trip through the Utah desert. Will this trip be what their friendship needs? Or will it put them in further danger?
It feels appropriate that I read about this disaster of a hiking trip while I was out of power at home due to a hurricane. While the trip itself for Aster and Katie is awful, they story is engaging, exciting, and worth the read for anyone who loves a thrill.
What Katie experienced is traumatic and awful. How character's response to that a year later is very realistic and provides an opportunity to show how trauma doesn't just impact a single moment: it changes a person forever. That also changes the people and relationships around them too.
Unfortunately, that opportunity to showcase an important point is completely ignored by the end of the story and it leaves me as a reader disenchanted. Why use such a violent incident if you're not going to give it a satisfying conclusion? It makes me wish it wasn't a part of the story at all if the author was just going to sideline it.
Aster is trying desperately to get her relationship back with her cousin and doesn't know how to do it. She starts as the strong one and by the end is the one in need of help. Her turn of fortune shows how sometimes all you need to do is let others find their strength themselves rather than be babied.
The killer is a bit of a twist, but any smart reader will see it coming.
A fun thriller that fails to wrap up all storylines.
My rating: 3.75 out of 5
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