This book starts off very strong. Centering on two friends out in the wilderness without a sat phone, roughing it “old school”, with some pretty serviceable nature writing alternating with back story of the friends working as foreshadowing. There’s also a Forrest fire mentioned many times no one seems to care about? I guess when you’re kayaking the danger is decreased because it presumably won’t cross…? but it still feels odd.

When a discombobulated man enters their excursion, this turns into a more low burn suspense experience, as it appears the man’s wife may have been kidnapped. But things are more complicated than that, as the men find out as they embark on an attempt to find the missing woman.

As you might expect, the men are well rendered but also extremely masculine in ways I don’t identify with, so I was always a bit at a distance with the characters. It feels a lot like a specific kind of power fantasy that indulges in a kind of pathos that feels slightly antiquated to me, but almost certainly will be what people who really identify with these characters will want from this kind of story.