Nature is an important part of this novel as the characters live and work in the wild areas of the world, this particular novel taking place primarily in Montana and Canada. The plot is heartfelt, based on true life experiences of the author and her mother which certainly make the story more powerful. It is a quick and enjoyable read with the mystery solvable long before the ending. In some ways I wanted the story to end several pages earlier as it was not important that every loose end be tied.

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing for ARC to read and review.

She's finally found a job that fits her. She works with dogs to find scat and get knowledge about the animals that live in the area they examining. She really enjoys working with the dogs. When they assign her to Tate, she discovers she might have a romantic interest, too. Life is good. But it doesn't stay that way...

Berkley and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you). It will be published March 5th.

The story begins with her learning her new job, training her assigned dog, and working with Tate. Eventually she falls in love with Tate and sleeps with him. But when she finds out about the murders done near their base of operations, she looks into the local cases. She notices Tate can be charming and nice and he can be brash and odd, too. But she loves him and tries to work around it. Then she finds out that Tate has been attacked by a bear and killed. She grieves him but she also wonders if he might have had something to do with the murders.

When she asks a former investigator to help her sort out her suspicions, he agrees. The first thing he discovers is that Tate isn't who he said he was. After she shares conversations with him, he finds Tate knows things that only the murderer would.

Marian checks on his work schedule and finds he wasn't around when the women died, so she thinks she was mistaken. Then she checks further and finds out he lied about where he was. Suddenly it could be possible...

This is a tale of those that died earlier, just how manipulative Tate could be, and even more about him. She's trying to prove it but she might not live long enough to do so. Tate has more surprises for her.

This is a thriller with a batch of horror mixed in. It keeps you reading.

The Last Woman in the Forest is the story of Marian, a dog handler, nomad, and wilderness adventurer who falls in love with a man who is not what he appears to be. Marian lives an unconventional life, taking temporary jobs in places documenting wildlife. She finds herself taking a job in a remote part of Montana, where she loves handling the dogs, and is part of a research team looking for elusive American caribou. She works with another handler name Tate, and she falls in love with him quickly. Different chapters come from different points of view, and the reader is introduced to victims of the Stillwater Killer. Each of the female victims bears a resemblance in appearance and personality to Marian. After her boyfriend Tate is killed working on a research project by a grizzly bear, she becomes consumed with researching the murders, and trying to see if Tate had been responsible. She finds an ally in retired investigator Nick - who helps her see through the web of Tate's lies. Of course through the book you will find yourself wondering "Is Tate really dead" "Is Marian safe" who is responsible for the killings? Read and find out! I received an e-book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Great psychological thriller! Les Becquets weaves together a scary, many faceted story of a serial killer from a perspective that keeps you guessing all the way through.

Marian Engström finds her perfect job as a field technician for K9s for Conservation, working with rescue dogs on various projects out West. She also finds the perfect man there in Tate, but starts to suspect him of some involvement in the death of four young women in Montana and enlists the help of Nick Shepherd, a former forensic profiler, now a counselor in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Together they piece together the evidence and arrive at a shocking conclusion. A unique setting and a puzzling mystery along with a message to women to pay attention when something doesn’t feel right.

I thought this book got off to a slow start and almost put it down but I'm so glad I didn't. It is suspenseful thriller that hooked me. As a dog lover and trainer, I was pleasantly surprised by the detail and accuracy of working with dogs. The author did her homework. This book was a good read. I will recommend it.

What would you do if you suspected the person you loved was a sociopath? Not really a question we encounter often in our lives, but Diane Les Becquets does a masterful job of imagining how that might go. She has written a suspenseful and surprising story that starts out with a kick-in-the-gut scene that is every woman’s worst nightmare - when your car breaks down on a lonely road in the middle of the night and you have a bad feeling about the handsome guy who stops to help. I admit, though, that the tense and horrifying prologue set me up to expect that same tension all the way through the book. That didn’t happen in quite the way I expected. It’s a little like the difference between “Criminal Minds” and “Murder She Wrote” - the beginning is raw and physical, while most of the rest of the book is more cerebral, kind of like a Sandra Bullock thriller. However, all that thinking and worrying, and doubting evaporates with a big twist towards the end. Recommended for fans of Lee Child.

Interesting premise of a woman trying to determine if her deceased boyfriend was a serial killer. Told with flashbacks and present day timeline the transition is at times clunky. I did have to skim several times so the book could do with a bit more editing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for giving me an ARC of this book in return for a review.

This book follows Marian who appears to be struggling to figure out her life and a career. She loves dogs and nature which leads her to a position with a conservation crew studying wildlife in Montana.
She learns a lot from the other people on her team and begins to form a relationship with her mentor Tate. After his tragic death, questions start to arise about him that Marian can't answer. There are too many connections between Tate and a string of women that have been killed. She turns to retired forensic profiler Nick Shepard, who is fighting his own demons, to try to clear Tate's name if only in her own heart. Will he help her prove the man she loved blameless or make her never be able to trust her instinct again? The book jumps around a lot and is fairly predictable but a decent read.

So, after reading the author's note in the afterword, I feel really bad giving this book a less than stellar review, because oh boy... this author has been through a lot in her life. To come through what she has experienced and to process it all through a novel is a beautiful thing, and she has my complete respect. However, I have to be honest and say this book fell totally flat for me. In fact, the afterword was a heck of a lot more interesting than the actual book.

Quick synopsis. Marian is an independent strong woman who has taken a low-paying job in the wilderness looking for animal scat that can be used for conservationist research. She loves dogs, and in this microcosm of a social unit. the dog handlers are highly respected. She meets Tate, one of the handlers, and falls in love with him. But a bunch of women have gone missing in the area in the past few years. And as their relationship progresses, he starts to act kind of weird. When something horrible happens to Tate, Marian starts to wonder if maybe he was the killer...

Marian. I just don't get her. I get what she was SUPPOSED to be, but her character isn't well-developed enough to pull that off. Nick, the detective who is working the case, is the most interesting character. He's fighting a losing battle with a glioblastoma, but his work on earth isn't done until he can name this killer. I would have loved to have had less info about dogs and wild animal poop, and more about Nick.

There is a kind of fun little twist at the end, but it's not really all that shocking. I just kept hoping the pace would pick up, but this one didn't work for me.

The setting of a book is a big important thing to me especially if outdoors such as Alaska or Montana. Even Mountain climbing or river rafting or tracking a lost hiker like this book so long as action happens then I am captivated. This author's last book Breaking Wild was very much worth rereading because it was awesome. The woman in the Forest is already up on my best book for 2019 list. If you like nature books along with suspense and edge of your seat excitement try both of these books. You will not be able to put them down! Thanks for reading my review.

Although flagged as a suspense thriller, there was not a lot of suspense. To me, it read more like women’s fiction. I loved that I learned quite a bit about conservation work.

The first couple of chapters were interesting but I could not get past that. This is a psychological thriller but not written in a manner that is very suspenseful. The writing is nice and the scenery is described very well but just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I would like to thank NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

"It’s a terrible thing to have loved someone and not know the extent to which you have been deceived… " (Marian Engström)

Marian Engström scanned the seasonal conservation job listings for her next position. Her latest job had taken her to South Padre Island, Texas to rescue sea turtles but the contract ended and time to move along.

As a dog lover, she was pleased to find a position with Conservation Canines through the University of Washington. The study would be in the bitter sub-zero cold of the snowy mountains near Alberta where oil exploration in oil sands was taking place. The team of dog handlers and trip orienteers would be based out of Whitefish, Montana in a place the group called “The Den”.

Marian, and the other orienteers, would assist the dog handlers setting up trip navigation in designated zones locating wolf, caribou and moose scat, bagging each detected specimen, and charting the waypoints. The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of the oil drilling on the wildlife in the area. This aspect of the novel is well researched and reads a little bit clinical but very interesting.

The book opens with the vividly described murder of a trusting young woman charmed by someone she perceived to be a good Samaritan. Labeling the murdered girl, (Stillwater) Victim #1, alerts the reader to watch for clues. One of the primary or secondary characters is a serial killer!

We meet Marian six months after she has moved to the Whitefish base camp. She is wading into Bull Creek sprinkling the ashes of her boyfriend and dog handler, Tate, and watching them flow downstream. The accident that caused his death unknown to the reader.

"It was a beautiful spot…Tate had chosen this location…had pressed the river rock against her palm and asked her to remember."

Marian stands in the cold stream reflecting on their brief relationship with its sweet and sour tones. Heading back to camp, she’s left with an edgy feeling that something was off. Did he really loved her as much as she loved him? Where to begin to unravel her contradictory feelings?

Tate would share life stories with her making her cry in sympathy for him. One tear-jerker described a stray dog he adopted as a child that died after falling into a swift stream. Another time, out of the blue, he tells her he found the body of one of the four Stillwater murders. She decides to confirm the accuracy of this story to ease her mind.

She contacts Nick Shepard, a retired forensic profiler, known to be intimately involved in the Stillwater murder investigations. Although he is dying of cancer, a fact he tries to keep from her, he agrees to help confirm or dispel the facts of Tate’s story.

With Marian and Nick narrating, the story gymnastically flips back and forth in time beginning when Tate picked her up at the airport and ultimately reach present day where we learn about Tate’s fate. Juxtaposed between Marian and Nick’s chapters are vivid tales of the other three unsolved Stillwater murders that may be a bit disturbing to some people. The final chapters pull together loose threads leading to a dramatic conclusion.

The isolation and loneliness were palpable. Survival was not so much the result of luck as it was of skill and training. The overarching themes of observation and situational awareness crisscrossed Marian’s job as well as her personal life. Was she as gullible as it seemed or was she out maneuvered by mastermind of evil? Surrounded by macho mountain men with personalities like Jeremiah Johnson, was it easy for a young woman to be drawn to a man seemly devoted to her? Did Nick find peace for the families of the murdered girls?

A good solid book worthy of a read. There’s something for everyone -love, friendship, trust and distrust, murder, dogs, freezing cold and stark wilderness settings.

Good story with lots of twists.
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This book is written in a different manner than what we see in a typical suspense thriller or murder mystery. This book reads more as a women’s fiction story that evolves into something much more sinister.

Written in short sentences with a timeline that bounces back-and-forth between the present and the past, you have to be on your toes when reading this novel.

The author sneaks in tiny drips of clues and information. Just enough to make you doubt your gut feelings and wonder where the story is actually going.

Interesting and very unique, we get a birds-eye view of the job that those in conservation work truly do. The wonder of nature and the studies of animals and wildlife in their natural habitat is a huge part of the story.

But then you begin to wonder if everyone is as they truly seem to be. Women are dying and one woman in particular is very suspicious. Doubts sneak in as the man she truly loves seems to be the one responsible, or is it someone that she works with?

The story is written with deep subtlety that forces you to pay attention and keeps you completely engaged, wondering what’s next.

While the timeline bouncing back-and-forth does get to you and can frustrate you, it also heightens the suspense and brings in those chilling feelings and tell-tale creepy feels as the story winds up.

The author created a remarkable novel that is one of a kind tale of psychotic personalities that can completely consume you. Definitely not a book you will soon forget.

I had not anticipated the suspense of this title, which in hindsight, I should have expected. I read the prologue and found myself disturbed and did not read the remainder of the title. It is strictly a personal preference and no reflection of the author or substance of the work. I will recommend it to fellow readers who enjoy a hair-raising tale, but it simply was not right for me.

Is Marian dating the love of her life or a serial killer? After his death she finds more and more clues that make it look as though he may be a twisted serial killer. But was he? This psychological thriller isn't narrated by a woman who is unreliable, drunk or on medication. This one speaks for the women victimized who want to take their own power back.

#TheLastWomanInTheForest# by: Diane LesBesquets.
Review by: I Love To Read:Librarian
Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read this thriller in exchange for an honest review.
Marian Edgnstrom lives close to nature in her pursuit of becoming a dog handler in the wild. These well trained dogs work hard helping document the number of wild animals in any given area.
It's a highly skilled occupation as well as a lonely one. Few people populate the various camps the dog handlers occupy. Marion meets Tate, a handsome dog handler. She's attracted to him and so pleased when he takes her under his wing to share his expertise with her. It isn't long before she's head-over-heels for Tate.
During the past four women have been brutally murdered in the surrounding wilderness. These deaths worry Marion. So much so she seeks the help of a retired profiler. She and this profiler become friends as they compare facts. With the profilers' help, the murderers' possible identity emerges, placing Marion in jeopardy because others in the camps know she's snooping.
She comes face-to-face with the killer. The author takes us to a harrowing finale. A real nail-biter. Will Marion survive or will she become victim no. five?

Thank you to Netgalley for this book. I really enjoyed it. I loved the MC Marian and the villain was really good too (not going to say who - spoilers!). I also loved the description of the various wildlife and locations they visited. Great ending too!

This is the first book I have read by Diane Le Becquest and I am not sure what to say other than I am going to pick up all of her mystery books from now on. The book isn't perfect and I found things that had me wondering if it was the story or the authors writing style but I will admit readers will not be disappointed as they follow Marian Edgnstom as discover the man she loved wasn't the man she thought he was. The story moves though different time tables which is difficult for any author who is telling a story. Which is way I said the story isn't perfect and story might not be for every readers.

The author is very descriptive and details the scenes and animals in the story.



Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of Diane Les Becquets The Last Woman in the Forest