12. The Nature of Disappearing by Kimi Cunningham Grant

listened on Libby

304 pgs. (9:41)

2024
adult mystery/thriller
Finished 3/5/2025
Goodreads rating: 3.66
My rating: 3
Setting: contemporary Idaho woods

My comments: Relationships, trust, addiction, survival skills and poor self-esteem seem to be the main themes of this book.  I enjoyed the adventure of being miles and miles into land where there's no one else, including no wi-fi.  But I wasn't fond of the way the story kept flipping back-and-forth to tell the whole story.  I usually don't mind this sort of thing, but this one didn't work for me....this could've been told at once in a much shorter, less boring presentation.  Perhaps it switched back-and-forth too frequently?  I just wasn't fond of the way the book was put together and had to force myself to go back to finish it.

Goodreads synopsis:  In this captivating novel of suspense, a wilderness guide must team up with the man who ruined her life years ago when the friend who introduced them goes missing.

     Emlyn doesn’t let herself think about the past.
     How she and her best friend, Janessa, barely speak anymore. How Tyler, the man she thought was the love of her life, left her freezing and half-dead on the side of the road three years ago.
     Her new life is simple and safe. She works as a fishing and hunting guide, spending her days in Idaho’s endless woods and scenic rivers. She lives alone in her Airstream trailer, her closest friends a handsome and kind Forest Service ranger and the community’s makeshift reverend, who took her in at her lowest.
     But when Tyler shows up with the news that Janessa is missing, Emlyn is propelled back into the world she worked so hard to forget. Janessa, it turns out, has become a social media star, documenting her #vanlife adventures with her rugged survivalist boyfriend. But she hasn’t posted lately, and when she does, it’s from a completely different location than where her caption claims to be. In spite of their fractured history, Emlyn knows she might be the only one with the knowledge and tracking skills to save her friend, so she reluctantly teams up with Tyler. As the two trace Janessa’s path through miles of wild country, Emlyn can’t deny there’s still chemistry crackling between them. But the deeper they press into the wilderness, the more she begins to suspect that a darker truth lies in the woods―and that Janessa isn’t the only one in danger.
      Poignant, suspenseful, and unforgettable, THE NATURE OF DISAPPEARING explores what it takes to start over―and the cost of letting the past pull you back in.

37. Biting the Moon - Martha Grimes

Adult Mystery
An Onyx Book, Penguin Publishing, 1999
paper,$12.00
301 pgs.
Rating:  2.5

First line:  "The girl's hair was white below the scarf, now a scarf of snow, and there was a fine rime of ice on her eyebrows."

The story starts with Andi Olivier out in the wilds of the Sandia Mountains near Santa Fe, NM, rescuing trapped coyotes and healing them.  Andi Olivier is the name she gave herself when she saw the initials AO on her backpack.  She has no memory of her past, only that she woke up one morning in a B & B in Santa Fe with a man who was supposedly her "Daddy."  She knew this wasn't true.  But she had no idea at all about her background, her name or even her age, which she guesses to be about 17.

Then she meets Mary, and lonely 14 year old, and together they set out to figure out Andi's backstory.  They become close friends immediately, the fearless, clever, implacable Andi and the questioning, not-so-sure -of-herself, Mary.  And what an adventure they set out on...following the clues to Idaho and rescuing dogs, intimidating bad guys, making friends with unlikely characters, white-water rafting, witnessing dog-fighting and illegal big-game hunting,  murdering....  about as unlikely a story as any two teenagers could be a part of. But...well.....not exactly silly, or even ridiculous, but....improbable.

There was some great writing included, like:

"Yet Mary, who had not been violated, felt her own life to be a tangle of conflicting needs.  Her sister, Angela, had always talked about "centering," finding one's "center."  Mary felt she had no center.  She was the Scrabble letters spilled across the table, letters she could not put together to spell anything sensible.  Andi, on the other hand, had mastered the game; as if magnetized, the letters flew together."

18. Killer View - Ridley Pearson

Sheriff Walt Fleming, Sun Valley, ID #2
Audio read by Christopher Lane
Brilliance Audio, 2008
8 unabridged cds
9 hrs.
HC 340 pgs.
Rating: 3.5

The setting was in multiple blizzards in the mountains of Colorado where the rich go to ski and have multi-million dollar homes. Since I love snow so much (not) even reading about it puts me into a dark mood. So I wasn't crazy about the setting. The protagonist, Walt Fleming, I liked.

Walt and two veterinary friends, brothers Randy and Mark Akers, go together up a nearby mountain during a blizzard to look for a possible lost skiier. A gunshot is heard, and Randy is dead. Then Mark disappears, a young girls is drugged and raped, and low-level radioactivity is found in some water. Local ranchers are keeping mysteriously quiet about dead sheep, and there's a rogue group of nutsos called the Samarands that are trying to terrorize the country for their own agenda. Throw in a glider airplane, two young twin daughters caught between a somewhat-nutty mother and an overworked dad, and there's the story....pretty much. It was interesting, but drawn out in places and rushed through in others. Oh well.

I consider Ridley Pearson a pretty decent storyteller. I met him once - at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale when he and Dave Barry covered me in squirting Coke while trying to do a science experiment while talking up their book of that name. He was a really nice guy.