Synopsis:

Katy Sweeney is looking for her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, her free-spirited younger sister, Phoebe, vanished without a trace on the remote, achingly beautiful coastal highway in Western Australia. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up on her.

Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy retraces her sister’s steps, searching for any clues the police may have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and how dangerous were they?

And then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, who is on the run from her own dark past. Katy realizes that Beth might be her best—and only—chance of finding the truth, and the two women form an uneasy alliance to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this wild, beautiful, and perilous place.

Anna Downes takes us on a twist-filled journey into the dark side of solo female travel, in this gripping novel that explores what drives us to keep searching for those we have lost, the family bonds that can make or break us, and the deception of memory.

Rating:

Review:

Like a lot of people, I have been intrigued by this sudden explosion of “vanlife” influencers on social media. It seems to be this interesting mixture of people who love to travel, people who can’t afford a home and are forced to live on the road, and people who love adventure. And, naturally, we’ve all heard the media stories of times it has gone very badly in the last few years too. So, with that in mind, I was intrigued by this book. The premise sounded very promising, a girl looking for her missing sister. I expected that the mystery would be finding out what happened to her, it was….in a way.

My biggest complaint with this book is that it seems to be described by a lot of people as a “slow burn”. Normally I am fine with a slow burn of a book. But this book is only 369 pages. That’s a pretty average sized book. And the pace of this book, plus the length of the overall book, led me to feel like this was less of a slow burn and more like a book where nothing happens. It felt like nothing happened for SO LONG. The best part of the book was the last 25% because things actually happened.

I also didn’t like how many characters and POVs this book had. We have Katy, Phoebe, Beth, and Wyatt. And just for fun, sometimes Beth goes by several other names, so it’s virtually impossible to figure out who all these people are. I kept forgetting who we were talking about when Katy would mention Lily…who the hell is Lily? Oh right, Lily is Beth. I had to go back and re-listen to whole chapters because I couldn’t remember which POV we were in because all of the characters sound exactly the same. It was so confusing. I felt like I had no idea what was going on for most of the book.

The twist at the end of the book was okay. It wasn’t what I expected, which was a nice touch. But as more information kept spilling out it started to get a bit silly. It felt like a Billy Mays commercial. “Just when you thought the twists were done..wait there’s more! And for only $14.95 shipping and handling you can have yet another twist on the house!” It was too much. All of the characters were unreliable narrators, none of them were telling me a truthful or accurate story. So, by the end of the book it felt a bit pointless. I am no stranger to unreliable narrators but when it turns out that all 500 narrating characters are lying and have ulterior motives…well…what did I just read?

I did appreciate the beautiful writing about the scenery of Australia. This author has a beautiful way of describing things. I liked the narration of Phoebe’s social media posts, they were whimsical and captivating. I also appreciated the book’s discussion about domestic violence and how it intersects with the “vanlife” community. In the end this book had some redeeming qualities, but it just wasn’t my jam.