I read Lisa Gardner's new releases every year now and it's always a source of excitement for me. To be honest, she tends to be a fairly middling author. I give her a lot of three stars, with occasional books falling on either side. But her writing style is so easy and compelling that I never want to put her books down and I'm engrossed all the way through.

This book was actually a bit different than her others. Instead of being centered around an investigation, the main character joins a search party looking for the body of a hiker who went missing five years before and is now presumed dead. This book almost feels more horror-esque in the sense that a big bad is watching them from afar and picking them off one by one. It's creepy and thrilling and a really interesting story, but not her usual police (or police adjacent) investigation. And it wasn't really to my taste.

I think for that reason I found it a bit disappointing, but I still think this is a solid book. Just not the book for me and not the reason I generally pick up Gardner's work. But if you like this kind of story, I'd definitely recommend this the way I'd recommend most of her other books. They're light and easy and fun and so utterly enjoyable that I'll probably be picking them up every year that she continues writing them.