lynnreadsbooks 's review for:

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

3.0

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Admittedly, I have not read The Dry yet (still on the library’s wait list), but Force of Nature was promoted as a stand-alone book. While the plot itself is stand-alone, the investigating characters seemed pretty flat, very little background or development. Of the rest of the characters/suspects, there were so many that I couldn’t full invest in any one of them. I had a hard time for the first half of the book keeping the women straight because other than the twins, they all seemed to overlap. The plot concept is a new one, Harper’s writing is solid, and her build of atmospheric tension was decent, but the lack of character depth made this one fall flat for me. By the time I got to the end I didn’t care how it resolved, so long as it did. I’m still planning to read The Dry, and I’m hopeful I just read these backwards.