The Lost Man and Other February Reads

I finished 10 books in February:

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (audiobook)
The Lost Man by Jane Harper (ARC)
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Crown of Feathers (ARC)
The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Editor by Steven Rowley (eARC)
Save Me From Dangerous Men by S.A. Lelchuk (ARC)
The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming by Lemony Snicket
Swing Time by Zadie Smith (audiobook)

My favorite ARC of the month was The Lost Man (review below).

You can find other reviews for Crown of Feathers here and The Editor here.

I received a copy of The Lost Man by Jane Harper from the publisher (Flatiron Books) in exchange for an honest review. The Lost Man is scheduled for release February 5, 2019.

The Lost Man opens with a body deep in the Australian outback. Cam’s body is found at the gravesite of the legendary stockman. This remote site is near the boundary between Cam’s property and the property of Cam’s brother, the main character Nathan. Nathan returns to Cam’s property (and their childhood home) to bury his brother and search for answers. Why did his brother wander miles from his vehicle without even a bottle of water? Why was his vehicle abandoned even though it was completely functional and loaded with food, water, and a radio? What was his brother hiding?

Harper does an excellent job at putting the setting of this story on the page. I could clearly see the expanses of nothing but sand and sun that surrounded Nathan and his family. I could feel the heat. I found that I couldn’t read this story without a glass of cold water at hand to keep the desert she described at bay.

Harper fills this slice of the outback with a group of very real people. Each of them has a piece of the story Nathan is working so hard to uncover. Each of them has reasons for keeping their knowledge tightly guarded. Harper does a great job of weaving the past into the lives and current day interactions of her characters. I cared about them all. And I trusted none of them.

It is clear from the beginning that there are secrets to be found by the reader. Yet I never felt like Harper was keeping anything hidden from me (and Nathan) that we should know at that point in the story. The timing of her reveals was just about perfect. I figured out the whole story at the exact moment you want to figure out the mystery in a thriller: right before I turned the page to the final reveal. This made the ending very gratifying for me. Every piece of the puzzle that Harper had scattered through the desert fit into place in the final story.

Overall, I loved The Lost Man. I will definitely be reading more by Jane Harper.