This is the second book featuring Aaron Falk. He is called by Alice, who is helping him and his partner in a money laundering case, in the middle of the night. The next day he finds out that she is missing on a trek in a National Park. He and his partner go to investigate, wondering if her disappearance is linked to their case. The chapters are interspersed with the story of the five women who set on the trek together, got lost and fell out. Was one of them the murderer? Was is linked to an old serial killer case? The characters are sympathetically drawn although the two main detectives are not fleshed out hugely.

I enjoyed the story and read it in one sitting. However, it was less tense than the first novel and the end less dramatic. Satisfying, though.

With a book so good as The Dry, the sequel was always going to be a tall ask for the author but I think Jane Harper has nailed it. Force of Nature is another atmospheric book set this time in bushland where two groups of employees are sent on a team building exercise. The slow pace does not detract from the tension and the author made good use of short chapters towards the end. I think Aaron Falk is a great character and I’m really hoping there is more to come from him.

Enjoyable twist of thriller and police procedural.I wish I'd read book one actually but perfectly good without. It would be nice to put a bit more flesh on the characters of Fall and Carmen. Excellent portrayal of mean girls meeting corporate idiocy.

Another great story about troubled detective Aaron Falk and his sidekick Carmen

Except it’s not really about Aaron, but more about the ladies who go on a corporate outback experience. The suspense is there from the outset and each of the female characters has a flaw which could have a bearing on the outcome...

At one point I did think the book was going to end on an anticlimax but that was another of the author’s sneaky mechanisms to date you in and then make you think you know where it is going...

A good tale of suspense and intrigue

4.5* recommended!

Loved Jane Harper's The Dry, so couldn't wait to get enthralled into the latest Aaron Fauk story. And I was not disappointed, The storyline has a good flowing pace with a well thought out plot, which unfolds over two time frames, and how all the unexpected connections come together.
The groups difficult circumstances highlights their personal struggles and how people react when faced with desperate situations.
Full of tension, absolutely gripping from start to finish.
May the series continue.

Thank you Netgalley, Little Brown and Jane Harper for allowing me to read and review this book.

Weirdly, just as I was finishing this one, an email publicity shot for team building courses popped up. Erm no thank you. Not after reading Jane Harper’s incredibly atmospheric, absorbing and often disturbing tale of a hike gone horribly wrong. But was it Mother Nature or human nature that caused one to be left behind…

I was extraordinarily pleased to see the return of Aaron Falk, the brilliantly drawn character from this author’s masterpiece “The Dry” – whilst “Force of Nature” is a very different beast, the beautiful sense of place Jane Harper brings to her narrative remains, as does the insightful and compelling characterization and the totally gripping plot construction.

Pacy and cleverly done, we watch the search unfold, follow Falk as he attempts to discover whether his witness disappearing is anything to do with his case, whilst in flashback we see the women start their journey and watch them slowly disintegrate in a very Lord of the Flies type manner – although perhaps more realistically. It is utterly gripping, gorgeously unpredictable and a proper literary page turner.

If you loved The Dry you’ll love this. If you haven’t read it then do, THEN read this. This is perfectly placed crime fiction, tackling socially relevant themes against a beautifully immersive backdrop, entertaining, haunting and authentic. You can’t ask for more really.

Highly Recommended.

Fresh from solving his friends' murder, Aaron Falk is back at his desk investigating financial crimes. Then a whistleblower from his latest case goes missing on a weekend team building event and Falk must decide if it's murder...

This is a good follow up to "The Dry" which did feel stand alone to me and I did not see how we could continue to work with Falk. Jane Harper has done a very good job of transplanting him whilst keeping things the same and this time we see Falk going back to his normal job whilst still becoming involved in interesting goings on.

There is less about the background of Falk in this novel which is great if you have read the first one but will possibly make him feel less of a rounded character for new readers. Nevertheless, he is still a fairly interesting person and there is certainly a lot to learn about the new characters to keep the reader on their toes.

All in all, this is a typical police procedural, written in an attractive style and in a less usual setting. If you are a fan of novels like that (and I am), then you will very happily enjoy this one.

I really loved The Dry and when Jane Harper’s second book popped up on NetGalley I couldn’t, resist. Another outing for troubled detective Aaron Falk which hooked me instantly. Told in two time frames it’s the story of an outdoor survival expedition that goes wrong when a young woman, Alice disappears.
The reader learns gradually what has happened on the trip over the four days whilst in the present Falk and his partner desperately search for Alice who was also their informant in an investigation into the company she is working for and which organised the wilderness expedition.
The narrative moves effortlessly between the two time frames in alternative chapters which gradually shorten as the tension ratchets up heading towards the final revelations.
The women become more and more scared and tempers become frayed as they remain lost in the wilderness. These sections are so well described that you can imagine the dread they must be feeling as they try and find their way out of the forest. You can feel the trees closing in on them and this serves to heighten the tension building to a crescendo as finally all is revealed.
Characterisations of all the women are fantastic- we have the twins, Bree and Beth , who have a love, hate relationship. There are Lauren and Alice who have difficulties with their teenage daughters and Jill, one of the owners of the company who has a lot to hide.
I also liked the way we learn more about Aaron and why he is so damaged, finding relationships so difficult. His female partner, Carmen, is blunt with him and really makes him think about the way his life is heading and why he should let go of the past and all his regrets.
What a great book- I’m sure Jane Harper is onto another winner here and it will be every bit as successful as The Dry. She is so good at building atmosphere and really getting the reader to imagine they are in the places she describes. Five stars from me and recommended to anyone who has read The Dry as well as all of you who haven.’t as it works well as a stand alone novel. My only regret is that I will have to wait a while for the next one in the series.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my arc in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed Jane Harper's book The Dry and I was thrilled to receive a copy of her new book Force Of Nature. A group of five women on a bonding activity deep in the Australia outback go missing. Four of them are eventually found but one member is still missing. The second book in the Aaron Falk series was an exciting read and I can't wait to read more from this author. I would like to thank NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I knew it. I knew it! It was too good to be true. It was too much to ask for the writer who wrote one of the best, gripping mystery thrillers of 2017 without compromising on literary quality to repeat the same magic with her second book. I KNEW IT.

Oh well for what's it worth, Jane Harper is a very good story-teller, and while her debut novel The Dry was a book that helped restored my dying faith on the genre of mystery/thriller, this one it as special as I hoped it to be. From an early stage I was hoping for a devastating twist that would smash all that had gone before to pieces, sadly it never came and the tale faded away into a rather unexciting conclusion. With The dry, the beauty was in the details, the imagery, the character development and of course the dialogue but with this book, it breaks my heart to say it failed to deliver on any of those front and because of its lacklustre narrative, soulless dialogue and stilted character development, it also failed to deliver the dynamic ending it needed. The big question of 'who did it' was dragged out to the end but the revelation wasn't a surprise, partly because the list of suspects was so short.

If you guys truly want to experience the real power of Jane Harper’s storytelling, please skip this one and give The Dry a try. It’ll absolve you immediately into its gritty Australian backdrop and will leave you for wanting more as the haunting story of who kill the Hadler family comes to it satisfying end.

It starts out as a teambuilding weekend, two teams from the same company; one made up males the other female, heave on their backpacks and head off along separate trails near the Mirror Falls in the Giralang Ranges. The first sign that something has gone wrong is when the female team fail to make their camp on the second day. Appearing dishevelled, dirty and bruised much later one of their team, Alice is missing. As the search for Alice continues deep in the bush the remaining members of the party remain at the lodge assisting with enquiries.

The narrative switches seamlessly between the lodge where the authorities are co-ordinating the search and taking the reader with the group of women as they head off along the trail showing exactly what happened when they realise they have gone wrong, become desperate, loyalties are tested and power struggles start taking place. Both narratives are equally compelling.

I was hooked from the opening pages the storyline flows well, the characters are well written and the scene setting so good it is easy to depict the hostile territory that surrounds the group of women and the underlying tensions between them.

A terrific read that I found totally absorbing and one that will be remembered by me for a long time, having read the authors previous book The Dry which I also loved I was curious to see if her second book would be as good. It certainly was, it exceeded all my expectations.

I loved Jane Harper’s debut so was very excited to read this book.

Aaron Falk is a likeable and realistic character. The author brings atmospheric tension and doesn’t have to rely on overly violent, gory scenes.

It fell a little short of her first novel. But to be fair The Dry was always going to be a very hard act to follow.

I look forwarding to reading more of Jane’s books in the future.

Earlier this year I read Jane Harper’s debut novel, The Dry, and loved it! A fresh new voice in an overcrowded genre: I loved the setting, the protagonist and the plot. I couldn’t wait to get my mitts on her second book, Force of Nature, and was thrilled that it started in a way that drew me straight back in. Unfortunately, this book didn’t continue down that same route for me: the one that pulls me along with it. For a whole section in the middle, I actually grew bored. I don’t need a crime book to be high octane all the time, but I actually found myself losing interest in both the characters and plot for a large chunk.

Aaron Falk, our Detective from The Dry, is back which pleased me, as did the setting which was remote and away from the more usual urban backdrop. Falk is drawn into the mystery of a missing woman, Alice, who is on a corporate team-building hike in the bush. Four of the five women in the group return late, battered, bruised and frightened as not only did they lose their way in the bush, they also lost one of their group along the way. As a search party sets out to find Alice, the book alternates between the present time and going back a few days to allow the reader into the women’s trek and what really happened.

I think my main issue was that I never really got a feeling of how frightened or exhausted the women must have been. They were lost in the wilderness with dwindling supplies and it was raining and cold. I would have been terrified. I have done a solo hike of 120 miles in the UK and at one point I got lost on a foggy moor for an hour or so and the feeling of frustration and weariness just in that short timeframe was so hard to deal with, never mind wandering around with no food for days on end. There wasn’t enough plot to grab me in the middle section and with no real sense of terror or impending doom, I lost interest to the point that I almost gave up altogether.

I am glad I stayed with the book, however, as it did pick up again in the last quarter but even so I wasn’t blown away by the book.

Verdict:

Somewhat disappointing after having loved The Dry so much, but I will definitely read more of this series with Aaron Falk. I am still a fan of Jane Harper despite not being so enamored with Force of Nature.

A brilliant sequel to her first The Dry. Jane Harper has such an easy writing style. They are effortless to read and very hard to put down. She better be working on the next one! Set against the Australian outback, this book reminds me why I have never really been in to outdoors pursuits. Hiking and camping? No.
The common themes of the book for me were family; their complexities; what is left unsaid; what is said and then regretted; what we will do for our children and what we won’t; how forgiveness must be both meant and lived. I found it very touching: the exploration of Aaron’s relationship with his father.
Recommended.
Many thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Jane Harper shifts her setting from the devastating drought in The Dry to the equally hostile atmospheric environment of the Giralong Ranges, tough to negotiate, with its menacing history of Martin Kovac, a serial killer that still haunts the area, vivid in peoples memories and nightmares. Five women are on a corporate team building hike run by Executive Adventures, only four return. Federal Agent Aaron Falk of the Melbourne Financial Investigations Unit returns, this time with colleague, Carmen Cooper. They have been looking into financial corruption and money laundering at Bailey Tennants, and have a whistleblower in Alice Russell who is in the process of accessing crucial documents for them. Aaron gets a voicemail from Alice from which he makes out the words 'hurt her'. Alice has gone missing on the hike and Aaron is guilt ridden, suspecting the worst, thinking they endangered her life. Aaron and Carmen are concerned about what happened to Alice, and pressured by their bosses who persist in demanding that they get hold of the documents, no matter what. The novel follows the search for Alice and the parallel narrative that tells us what happened amongst the group of lost women as they struggle in the dense bushland, cold, wet, hungry, thirsty and desperate to survive.

Jill Bailey is viewed as nominally in charge due to her executive position in the company, although Alice constantly hacks away at her authority in her efforts to return to Melbourne to be with her daughter, Margot. It soon becomes clear that Alice is not nice, she is a mean and nasty woman, giving rise to a host of suspects with a motive to do away with her. Alice has a dark history with Lauren Shaw that goes back to their schooldays. Lauren is a biddable and vulnerable woman, unable to cope at work as her daughter, Rebecca, descended into the depths of misery with mental health issues after an incident at school. Beth is on probation after leaving prison, she has battled drug addiction, and is trying to mend her battered relationship with her twin, Breanna. As the women's situation deteriorates, the rifts, rivalries, conflicts, resentments and jealousies surface, destined to lead to violence. Aaron slowly begins to piece together the mystery of the missing Alice. Carmen proves to be instrumental in Aaron coming to terms with the guilt over the death of his father, a man well acquainted with the Girlang Ranges.

Jane Harper once again gives us a strong sense of location in the Girlang Ranges with her beautiful and detailed descriptions of the landscape, the dangers of snakes, with the howling winds and driving rain. Her psychological insights render her complex characters and their development authentic to the reader. Her writing is so vibrant that you think you are right there with the lost women as they stumble their way through the bush, hunger and fear contributing to their downward spiral as they turn on each other and Alice. The strongest recurring theme in the novel is the issue of just how far parents are prepared to go for their children. As I was reading this novel, echoes of Picnic at Hanging Rock came to mind, as indeed did the numerous other disappearances of people in the Australian landscape through the years. I am delighted to see that The Dry was not a one off for the author, this was a brilliant twisted read too. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

When one of the participants in a corporate teambuilding hike in remote terrain fails to return, police searchers are called in. Agent Aaron Falk and his partner also have a special interest in finding the missing woman.
Force of Nature is an even more powerful read than Jane Harper’s first novel Dry. Once again, the weather plays a key role in the story, but here, the battle is against cold and rain. Chapters alternate between the progress in the continuing search and a retrospective on how the ill-fated camping trip unfolded. As tension builds towards the conclusion, the chapters become increasingly shorter.
All the necessary elements are present in this read: important random events, a scattering of red herrings, past grievances, countless suspects, sweat blood and tears, an electric atmosphere and more insight into what makes Aaron Falk tick. This is a well written crime novel from an author who understands human nature. It will be interesting to see how the series develops.

Following hot on the heels of her first novel, ‘The Dry’, Jane Harper’s ‘Force of Nature’ does not disappoint. I loved both of these books and Aaron Faulk is becoming a firm favourite. I loved the setting in this book and the company team building trip in which the story is centred. ‘Survival’ in remote surroundings will always produce both the worst and best in characters. As with ‘The Dry’, the pace of the story unfolding in this book is just right and I think Jane Harper has mastered the rhythm of slowly revealing the pieces of the puzzle, layer by layer. Another excellent instalment in the Aaron Faulk series and I can’t wait to read the next offering. My thanks to Little,Brown UK and NetGally.

This is not your average thriller. I had read Harper's previous novel, The Dry, so I was looking forward to this. This I think is better again! Five female work colleagues go on a weekend bush survival team building exercise. At the end of that weekend only four women emerge from the Bush. Where is Alice Russell? Is she alive but lost as her colleagues believe or are they telling the whole truth? This is a book of petty grievances, bitchiness, personality clashes and violence. I loved it! Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy of this book.

Lost in the woods...

Two groups set off into the Australian outback on a team-building exercise. The men's team returns on time, but the women's team is late. The search for them finds nothing but, just as it's about to be abandoned for the night, four women burst out of the woods – some hysterical, some injured. But the fifth team member, Alice, isn't with them. Federal Agent Aaron Falk becomes involved when it turns out Alice made a phone call to him the night before, though all he can make out on the recorded message is a lot of static and two words... “hurt her”. Falk and his partner Carmen had been pressuring Alice to get information for them on her company, since they suspect her boss of money-laundering. What has happened to Alice? Did she just walk away from her team in the middle of the night and get lost or is there a more sinister reason for her disappearance? Just to add to the sense of unease the woods were where a serial killer once brought his victims – the killer is now dead, but his son is alive and no one know where he is...

It's not often I have to suspend my disbelief quite so early in a thriller, but I struggled with the whole concept that any company would send its inexperienced staff off into the outback with no professional support, no satellite phone, no flares – no way, in fact, of alerting anyone should things go wrong. Maybe they're tougher in Aus, but here the company management would be liable to major damages not to mention jail-terms. I also felt the idea that the son of a serial killer would necessarily be a serial killer was... dubious. I didn't feel Harper did enough to convince me of that likelihood by showing that the son had any kind of track record, nor did I feel that strand was really used effectively as the story developed. So I didn't get off to the best start with this one.

Having set up Alice's disappearance, the book then takes us back in time to follow the women on their hike, alternating this with Aaron and Carmen in the present assisting the search and slowly revealing the storyline about their investigation into the company. This works fairly well, and each trip into the woods focuses on a different one of the women so that we gradually get to know them all. It's not long before they get lost and then we get a kind of accelerated Lord of the Flies syndrome, as the women's veneer of camaraderie quickly gives way to greed, bullying and the dredging up of old scores. This is not a company I would choose to work for!

I don't want to be too hard on the book, since I suspect some of my relative disappointment with it is caused by too high expectations following Harper's excellent début in The Dry. But the technique of flicking back and forwards between two timelines is feeling increasingly tired and, a common complaint of mine these days, the first chapters telling us which women come out of the woods destroy any real suspense when we then go back in time. Every time one of the women other than Alice is in peril, we know she survives. I genuinely don't get why writers think these prologue-type chapters are a good idea, especially in a thriller. The book is also too long for its content – another common feature of current crime/thriller fiction. It drags badly in the middle and somehow the plot gets too convoluted for a thriller and yet not complex enough for a crime mystery. While Harper does achieve a feeling of creepiness at several points in the woods, the major storyline doesn't live up to its promise.

On the upside, Aaron and Carmen mesh together well and are a team I'll be happy to see work together again. Harper's writing, characterisation and powers of description are just as good as in her début – the book just needs a sharper plot and tighter structure to create a real feeling of suspense. All the elements are there and, while I think authors always have the primary responsibility, as a newish author I feel Harper deserved a stricter editor who would have made the criticisms several reviewers are now making. I always suspect publishers want to rush second books to market after a successful début, but sometimes it would be better to take a little longer – readers will wait. In the end, this is an averagely good thriller with the potential to have been an excellent one. Now that the always tricky second novel is over I look forward to seeing how Harper develops as the series progresses.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Little, Brown Book Group UK.