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A review by netflix_and_lil
The Survivors by Jane Harper
3.0
My coworker insisted that I pick up a Jane Harper novel ASAP and The Survivors was the first I could find at my local library. I will say that I was hoping to read The Dry first since it's her earliest book but thats on a 6 month waitlist so... I'll work my way back. After all, the most recent book released should be the best, right? Right?
The Survivors follows Kieran Elliot as he returns to his hometown in Tasmania to assist him mother and ailing father with their impending move to the mainland. The homecoming is tainted by memories of an accident from his youth which killed two men, leaving Kieran riddled with guilt even as an adult.
And then there's the dead girl on the beach... it's an Australian contemporary, it's always got to have a dead girl in or near a body of water.
I loved the writing. Harper moulded the environment of Evelyn Bay in a way that felt familiar but eerie. The caves and the oceans were well on their way to becoming the villains of the hour, and the way she personified them created a palpable sense of dread in past and present. If you grew up on any Australian coastline, a fear of drowning has probably been drilled into you; Harper uses this familiarity to great effect.
I took issues with almost all the characters. The people we followed were dull in comparison to the setting. Kieran is an extremely passive protagonist, until the end which by that point felt like a betrayal of his observer character archetype. Despite what the blurb would try to convince you, he's not the catalyst for anything in the story; he's just a guy who was present for most of the plot beats by coincidence. The other men in the story felt underwritten and underdeveloped, mostly there to act as red herrings or memory capsules for Kieran. The women fared a little better - the nature of having a female author - but no one really stuck out to me. No one enraged me and no one endeared me; even the victims felt glossed over.
The story was pretty good, it kept me guessing and had a few good twists but I couldn't help but feel it was a little half-done. Maybe I'm a sucker for drama, but I felt like the book forewent a lot of potential stakes by doing things a little too naturalistically. What I crave in small-town murder mysteries is extremes; heightened paranoia, accusations, witchhunts, old wounds torn open and shady pasts dredged up from the depths... while I think this was attempted with the addition of the catty Neighbourhood Watch page, I felt it didn't go half as far as it could and it never spilled out into the real world. The commentary on toxic masculinity also felt crowbarred in to fit the final twist, with a dreaded 'tell don't show' approach to lad culture and insecurity. I didn't get the sense that things were toxic enough to roll over into climax, at least what was shown to us. Harper didn't have to go full 'The Guest List' on it, but it might have helped to lay it on a bit thicker.
The climax felt rushed to all hell, and the revelation of who/what/when/why felt... inconsequential? And again, Kieran being the one to put everything together after spending the whole book accidentally overhearing things and being sad felt off. Why didn't this story have Pendlebury as the POV character? Or Renn? Or even Olivia? They all had far more compelling backstories and I wondered why Kieran was choose to narrate when in any other book he would have been a sidelined red herring character like the rest of his dude-bro friends.
So three stars is what it gets; definitely not my favourite mystery/thriller of the year but a decent enough introduction to Jane Harper, at least from a writing perspective. I'm looking forward to reading more from her.
The Survivors follows Kieran Elliot as he returns to his hometown in Tasmania to assist him mother and ailing father with their impending move to the mainland. The homecoming is tainted by memories of an accident from his youth which killed two men, leaving Kieran riddled with guilt even as an adult.
And then there's the dead girl on the beach... it's an Australian contemporary, it's always got to have a dead girl in or near a body of water.
I loved the writing. Harper moulded the environment of Evelyn Bay in a way that felt familiar but eerie. The caves and the oceans were well on their way to becoming the villains of the hour, and the way she personified them created a palpable sense of dread in past and present. If you grew up on any Australian coastline, a fear of drowning has probably been drilled into you; Harper uses this familiarity to great effect.
I took issues with almost all the characters. The people we followed were dull in comparison to the setting. Kieran is an extremely passive protagonist, until the end which by that point felt like a betrayal of his observer character archetype. Despite what the blurb would try to convince you, he's not the catalyst for anything in the story; he's just a guy who was present for most of the plot beats by coincidence. The other men in the story felt underwritten and underdeveloped, mostly there to act as red herrings or memory capsules for Kieran. The women fared a little better - the nature of having a female author - but no one really stuck out to me. No one enraged me and no one endeared me; even the victims felt glossed over.
The story was pretty good, it kept me guessing and had a few good twists but I couldn't help but feel it was a little half-done. Maybe I'm a sucker for drama, but I felt like the book forewent a lot of potential stakes by doing things a little too naturalistically. What I crave in small-town murder mysteries is extremes; heightened paranoia, accusations, witchhunts, old wounds torn open and shady pasts dredged up from the depths... while I think this was attempted with the addition of the catty Neighbourhood Watch page, I felt it didn't go half as far as it could and it never spilled out into the real world. The commentary on toxic masculinity also felt crowbarred in to fit the final twist, with a dreaded 'tell don't show' approach to lad culture and insecurity. I didn't get the sense that things were toxic enough to roll over into climax, at least what was shown to us. Harper didn't have to go full 'The Guest List' on it, but it might have helped to lay it on a bit thicker.
The climax felt rushed to all hell, and the revelation of who/what/when/why felt... inconsequential? And again, Kieran being the one to put everything together after spending the whole book accidentally overhearing things and being sad felt off. Why didn't this story have Pendlebury as the POV character? Or Renn? Or even Olivia? They all had far more compelling backstories and I wondered why Kieran was choose to narrate when in any other book he would have been a sidelined red herring character like the rest of his dude-bro friends.
So three stars is what it gets; definitely not my favourite mystery/thriller of the year but a decent enough introduction to Jane Harper, at least from a writing perspective. I'm looking forward to reading more from her.