A review by marie_22
The Nature of Disappearing by Kimi Cunningham Grant

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.75

It’s amazing to me how this author manages to captivate me with her stories every time. One thing that contributes to that I think is that her books are never what I’m expecting going in but in a good way, like it’s better than what I was expecting, if that makes sense.

In this story we follow Emlyn who works as a guide for fishing and hunting tours. She lives by herself in a small community in Idaho and mostly keeps to herself after a traumatic experience in the past which has her struggling with trusting herself and others. Coming back from a fishing trip, she finds out that an old friend is missing. After her ex-boyfriend begs her to help, she reluctantly agrees, and together they set out to find her. 

Emlyn was a great main character. I liked her from the start, and the more I found out about what had happened in the past, the more I was rooting for her. Sadly, the other characters kind of felt one dimensional to me, there wasn’t much (believable) character development and thus the stakes were low. Especially Varden was set up to be a great addition to the story, but then he was barely even in the book, missed opportunity imo. 

Pacing wise, I found it to be a bit slow, it only picked up around the 60% mark. I didn’t mind it that much because I enjoyed the story and for the most part it has a nice flow to it, but the flashbacks just took away the suspense for me sometimes.

Overall, I was really excited about this one and while it didn’t quite meet my expectations, I still think it’s a great read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the arc in exchange for an honest review.