This is the third book in the Alaska Wild series and follows Beth as she prepares for winter in Benedict, Alaska. Beth is hiding out, making sure to stay three steps ahead of her kidnapper who, last police knew, is still in the lower 48. But this small town isn't as idyllic as it seems after a battered woman stumbles into the town bar one night and her abusive husband is found dead the next day. Suspicions turn to the stranger in town - the census man - but he disappears soon after. In a small town with people trapped in by the winter weather, everyone is a suspect. But Beth, realizing there could be some hidden connections between her new and old lives, has a sneaking suspicion that maybe she isn't so safe in this town after all.
TW/CW: domestic violence
Okay, full disclosure time: I didn't know this was the third book in a series when I requested it from NetGalley. The description might have been missing that part when I initially looked or maybe I just missed it when I was reading through. If I did know, I wouldn't have requested as I haven't read either of the previous 2 books. I didn't realize my mistake until I was about halfway through so I did finish reading the book as is. I wanted to mention this right at the top so I acknowledge that some of my thoughts on the story might not be entirely accurate.
First thing I want to mention is that even though this is the third book in the series, I think Shelton does a great job of getting the reader up to speed. I initially thought that the beginning few chapters had a ton of info-dumping going on but now I realize that was the quick summary version of the previous books. Each book in the series follows Beth as she is learning to live in this new reality post-kidnapping. However, there are separate, stand alone mysteries that she helps solve in each book so from that perspective this can be read as a standalone. I never got lost while I was reading, but I did find some things to be a little more summarized than I would have liked and I assume those parts were stuff that was addressed in more detail in the previous books. So I'd say this series is similar in a lot of the detective fiction series where the main plot line in each book is a standalone mystery but there's an overall plot thread through all the books as well.
I really enjoyed the characters and the relationships explored throughout the book. Again, I think we're missing some of that initial character introductions from the previous books but I didn't have a hard time keeping the characters separate from one another. I think because I was missing this backstory, the characters weren't initially very developed but we got a lot of interaction between them and Beth so the characterization was brought out by the conversations and plot instead of the typical initial character description/interaction you get in a completely stand alone book. I did find Beth a bit under developed for my personal taste and maybe if I had read the previous books I would have more of her backstory/character development in mind. However, in my reading experience, I found her to be one of the more mysterious characters in the book which is a little funny since she's the protagonist of this series. I understand she's hiding out in this town and thus most people don't know who she is, but I do wish we had gotten more internal monologues or maybe flashbacks to flesh her character out a bit. I think this was made especially clear by the fact that Beth's mother shows up in town but both women seem to be pretty tight-lipped about their past. I did find the cast of characters in this town to be really charming and I liked the strong personalities we get from all of them.
The mystery plot, I found to be a bit convoluted. It wasn't hard to follow, exactly, but there were so many times when it wasn't clear how certain things were connected or how certain characters were making certain connections. I think my main issue stemmed from the fact that the reader was supposed to be wondering if the murders in town had something to do with Beth's past and I think that mixing and integrating wasn't done as well as it should have been. I think it would have been better if the two mystery lines were running completely parallel instead because I found this attempt to build suspense just ended up muddying the waters and making the story less enjoyable. I really enjoyed the red herrings that Shelton developed throughout the story for both mystery plots. I also think she did a great job blending isolation thriller tropes with some psychological suspense. There is a pretty consistent reminder to the reader that this town is small and isolated and the harsh winter conditions can really affect mental health. I really enjoyed the setting and the impact it had on the other story elements. There was one part of the mystery element that really bothered me and it was when one character found a piece of information that they needed to look at and then they kept getting side tracked. Multiple times. I was getting incredibly frustrated because I just wanted that character to go look at the information already. The reasons for the character getting sidetracked did not seem nearly as important as the actual information so I couldn't understand why the character was acting like that. I could see it was an attempt at building suspense and tension but it wasn't quite balanced effectively for me. Also, the ending did leave on a bit of a cliffhanger for Beth's personal life, but the main mystery of the book does get solved.
Overall, I liked this book and I really enjoyed the characters and setting. However, the mystery element fell a little flat for me.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC
Expected publication date is December 7, 2021.
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