This mystery opens in New Zealand on April 4, 1978 when the Chamberlain Family vanished on a rainy night. In 2010, the remains of one of the children are found and they show he lived for four years after the family's disappearance. One of the items they find with his remains is a tally stick - a piece of wood used to mark debts. This discovery leads to a list of questions - How had he survived and then died? Where is the rest of the family? And what type of debt is marked on the tally stick?
TW/CW: child death, parental death, animal death, child abuse, traumatic brain injury (discussed further below**)
I'll be honest, going into this book I was hoping to like it, but I wasn't sure what to expect from a 212 page book with such a vague synopsis. And I think that really is the best way to go into it. This story took so many turns and I was completely engaged through the entire reading experience. I read it all in one sitting and I was really surprised at how much I liked it. This came across to me, initially, as looking like it might be a bit underwhelming but now that I've finished it, I think the synopsis gives just the right amount of set up. I was expecting this to be pretty strictly a wilderness survival story and while it is that for a while, it turns into something so much more. So I'd say that if the premise intrigues you at all, then you should pick this up. The book is on the shorter side of my preferred reading length but I was surprised at how much plot and character development Nixon was able to weave into the story in that short page count. This was one of those reads where if you go back to look at the more technical writing craft elements, you can see just how tight the story was. There was really no extra fluff or unnecessary moments - all the fat had been trimmed and the story that was left was lean but made for an impactful reading experience.
The characters were really well developed and since the story does take place over the span of many years, we get a good amount of character growth and development. In fact, I really enjoyed how the characters seemed to go through multiple different development cycles as they adjusted to each new situation they encountered. It was also interesting to see how different characters adjusted differently when put in similar situations. Each character we see on the page - the Chamberlain family as well as other characters, I felt were described and developed in a very straightforward way that I was really able to latch onto.
**I did want to touch briefly on one character who suffers a traumatic brain injury in the opening incident. The injury results in the character's loss of speech, behavior changes, and trouble with attention. The character is not able to really clean or care for themselves but they do have other characters who care for them. However, there are some characters that make potentially triggering or upsetting remarks along the lines as "if Character A can't control when they urinate then they shouldn't wear pants and so they can pee anywhere" or "if Character A were an animal, I'd shoot them to put them out of their misery".
The way the setting was described and used was fantastic. The story is set on New Zealand's south island in the West Coast region. It is described as a very remote area with large areas of wilderness sparsely populated. If you look at pictures of the area, it is very striking with impressive landscapes and topographical features. However, as the Chamberlain family leans, these features can become deadly even while still being beautiful. The back and forth of the setting being described in a very picturesque way but then showing the impact of the Chamberlain family's situation was very well done and really gave an overall unsettling tone to the story. I visited New Zealand a few years ago and when I was doing my research and looking at all sorts of tourist websites, so many of them consistently cautioned visitors to not underestimate the wilderness and that even activities such as hiking can be much more dangerous in the New Zealand terrain. As the story progressed, we kept getting more and more small mentions of certain aspects to the setting and surroundings that were a consistent threat to the characters on page. That threat of harm was a really fantastic undertone to the story as a whole.
The ending to this story was really interesting. This isn't the typical mystery story where a journalist or investigator of some sort is trying to unearth the truth. So by the end, the reader knows exactly what happened to every member of the Chamberlain family, but other characters in the book do not. It was a really bittersweet ending because of this and some readers might find it a bit unsatisfactory. I really liked the choice to structure the ending this way and I think it fit the overall tone of the book really well. The story is told in dual timeline so we know from the beginning that remains of one of the Chamberlain children are found so then when we follow the 1978 timeline, there's a sense of dread because the reader knows something the characters don't. What was interesting is that we were given no details from the remains as far as a cause of death or any other information so that also heightened the sense of dread while reading because it felt like almost anything could be the catalyst for the death. Plus, the rest of the Chamberlain family remains weren't found so the tension in the story is also high because I was just waiting to see what happened to the rest of the family. I think there were a lot of good payoffs with moments that initially feel 'off' only to later be shown to be sinister and threatening to our characters.
Overall, I really enjoyed this read. I went into the story with only the little information from the synopsis and I was surprised at how deep and sinister the story got. There's a lot of plot, character development, and twists packed into this shorter read and I highly recommend it.
Thanks to NetGalley and World Editions for the ARC
Expected publication date is January 18, 2022
(orig pub August 4, 2020)
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