Wow! This book was epic, the twists and turns were unpredictable and crazy.

The way the author made you love a character then hate them but then feel something else for them was nuts. I honestly couldn’t work it all out and was shocked so many times toward the end.

This was such an easy read, I couldn’t put it down and it all flowed well and had enough story amongst the craziness to keep you intrigued.

I’ve read all of Christian Whites books and they are all brilliant! Can’t wait for another one.

4.5 stars!

White has done it again! And this one is my new favourite. This book has confirmed his reputation as the king of twists and dizzying turns, masterful storytelling and chapter endings that won’t let you put the book down.

When you open this book, be sure you have a few hours clear to read it, because it will suck you right in.

Here’s the gist if you haven’t heard of Wild Place:

....

In the summer of 1989, a local teen goes missing from the idyllic Australian suburb of Camp Hill. As rumours of Satanic rituals swirl, school teacher Tom Witter becomes convinced he holds the key to the disappearance. When the police won’t listen, he takes matters into his own hands with the help of the missing girl’s father and a local neighbourhood watch group.

But as dark secrets are revealed and consequences to past actions are faced, Tom learns that the only way out of the darkness is to walk deeper into it. Wild Place peels back the layers of suburbia, exposing what’s hidden underneath – guilt, desperation, violence – and attempts to answer the question: why do good people do bad things?

....

Christian starts very quickly with a simple setting and the inciting incident, and within no time at all the complications and dilemmas unfold. All characters are purposeful (don’t underestimate any of them), and well established. The climax is unpredictable and those chapter endings will keep you away from refilling your coffee cup or entertaining your kids until the very end. If you have loved his other work, you’ll be flying the flag on this one as well.

If those non-Aussies out there haven’t heard of Christian White (Wife and the Widow, Nowhere Child), then I’ll eat my hat because this author is an international star.

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Christian’s latest release. Thank you @netgalley and @affirmpress for approving me for this advanced ebook and return for this honest review.

It’s out 26 October and you are missing out if you haven’t written that date down.

Christian White’s second book, The Wife and the Widow was one of my favourite twisty thrillers this year, so I had high expectations for his third book and it didn’t disappoint.

Wild Place is a great story, set in late-80s, about a girl who goes missing, the witch hunt that follows, and the dark secrets that simmer below the surface of any ‘normal’ suburban community.

Just like The Wife and the Widow, White will have you convinced you know the answers. You don’t.

He’s really good at this.

💜 Thanks to @affirmpress and @netgalley for this ARC.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

I really loved this book. The rarity of a book that claims it will keep you guessing actually delivering is close to zero. Wild Place hit it out of the park with a home run!!!! Wild Place wins yet another rare one, as an Australian nearly all books set in Australia trying to gain a worldwide market pretty much demolish Australian culture into an absurd farce. This book had me back in the Australian suburbs in 1989. It is a fantastic read taking you on a wild ride with fantastic characters where any one of them could have done the deed!!!!!!!!

Set in the fictitious beach side suburb of Camp Hill at the beginning of the 90s, Wild Place is the story of high school teacher, Tom Witter, who goes on a quest to find out what happened to his missing student, Tracie Reed.

The police have dismissed Tracie as just another teenage runaway, but Tom knows that there is something more sinister at play. With the rise of the drug culture and Satanic worship encroaching on his idyllic suburban patch, Tom is desperate to find out what happened to Tracie, and to protect his family and the community they live in.

During the long summer break, the suburban dad becomes something of an amateur sleuth. Tracie’s troubled family, the neighbourhood bad boy and a rejected admirer all come under Tom’s scrutiny as he combs the untamed local nature reserve, known as wild place, for clues of her disappearance.

As Tom delves deeper into the lives of the Camp Hill residents, he learns that there are many secrets hidden behind closed doors. The picket fences and manicured lawns belie the dark and primal impulses of their owners, and the rampant parkland at the heart of the neighbourhood comes to symbolise the rising tide of anarchy and evil that threatens to turn their civilised world upside down.

Christian White’s latest novel is domestic noir at its best, as it questions how well we really know the people closest to us. If you enjoyed The Nowhere Child and The Wife and the Widow, you’re going to love Wild Place.

Wild Place.
Readers of White first two books should enjoy his latest Wild Place. Set in an aspirational suburb in the late 80's White offers us a believable and recognisable host of characters while gently sending-up the personalities and psychological dramas of suburban life. The crime, a missing teenage girl, is nothing new but White keeps the reader second guessing until the twist at the end. I didn't find it quite as clever as the previous two novels but still well worth a read.

‘Somewhere along the way, something had gone wrong.’

December 1989, Camp Hill, Victoria. Seventeen-year-old Tracie Reed goes missing. The police think she is just another runaway who will turn up in a couple of days. But neither her mother Nancy, nor her father Owen, believe that. The Reeds are divorcing and while that has unsettled Tracie, neither of them thinks she has run away.

Camp Hill is a small suburb, the kind of neighbourhood where most neighbours know each other. There is an active neighbourhood watch, and no shortage of people who observe those around them. Oil leaks under cars, missing garden gnomes are important topics of conversation, as are rumours about satanic rituals. When Tracie goes missing, other parents are concerned. Teenagers are told not to venture into the Wild Place, the community forest behind several homes (including Tracie Reed’s).

When the Keel Street Neighbourhood Watch meets after Tracie’s disappearance, local schoolteacher, Tom Witter, married father of two sons, is tasked with posting missing person flyers. Tom is surprised that both his sons claim only vague knowledge of Tracie, but he quickly becomes focussed on a local youth. Tom and Tracie’s father Owen go on a hunt of their own which will not end well.

The search for Tracie puts this small suburban community under the microscope. Everyone, it seems, has something to hide. An old school friend of Tom’s, Detective Sharon Guffey, becomes involved in the case, bringing back memories for both.

There are plenty of twists and quite a few surprises as this story moves to its conclusion. While a couple of aspects can be figured out fairly easily, I was surprised by the final twist.

This is Mr White’s third novel, and the second I have read. Highly recommended.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Why do good people do bad things?
The year is 1989. A teenage girl has gone missing from the suburb of Camp Hill. The police think she's a runaway. Tom Witter thinks he has information that might solve the mystery. But when he and the girl's father take matters into their own hands, things go seriously awry. Tom appears to be living the family dream: loving wife, nice home, good job that he loves, two great kids. Could his mistakes cause him to lose it all? And what happens when dark secrets are uncovered?
I didn't much like the beginning of Christian White's ''Wild Place'', but it hooked me, and by about 1/3rd of the way through, I couldn't put it down. I think my initial resistance was due to the jargon. I had kids in university about that time and I never heard any of their friends speak that way. It grated a bit. But maybe my kids ran with a different crowd. I noticed there was less irritating jargon further on in the novel, and in any case the plot had me sufficiently hooked that it no longer bothered me. The characters were realistic. The writing style was generally easy to read. Overall, it was just a really great book and one I would highly recommend. I'll look for more by this Australian author.

Wild Place is the third novel by best-selling Australian screen-writer and author, Christian White. When seventeen-year-old Tracie Reed disappears, in early December, 1989, from her Camp Hill home on the Mornington Peninsula, the police soon conclude she’s another runaway. But even though her parents are in the throes of divorce, neither is convinced of this, and both are frustrated at police inaction.

Nancy Reed says that her daughter reported feeling watched, and she had changed her appearance in an effort to thwart this. Nancy is religious in maintaining her daily contact with the police, and vigilant of unusual activity in the area, but three weeks later, there is still no progress.

At the Keel Street Neighbourhood Watch meeting, local high school English teacher Tom Witter is tasked with posting fliers about the missing girl: he checks with his sons, who claim only vague knowledge of Tracie.

Summer vacation allows him time to take a good look at Wild Place, the community forest backing onto his home, and that of the Reeds, something that brings him to the attention of Detective Sharon Guffey, a former girlfriend, with whom he shares what he has found.

When Tom learns of an item found in Tracie’s bedroom, he becomes suspicious of a local youth. An extraordinary Neighbourhood Watch meeting, with Tracie’s father, Owen Reed in attendance, quickly evolves into a witch hunt, and an unwise visit results in accusations and drastic actions that cannot be undone.

If this novel is at first a bit of a slow burn, once the action starts it does not let up. White’s plot has a generous helping of secrets and lies, twists and surprises leading up to the climax and, while many readers will reject Tom’s suspicions, even the most astute are unlikely to pick the perpetrator much before the reveal.

Most Australian readers of a certain vintage will agree that White’s depiction of both the setting and era are faultless: his use of topical news items, TV, movies, foods, songs, toys and cars firmly cements the story in the late eighties; he easily conveys the accepted attitudes and community mindsets common at the time, and the characters that populate his suburbia are wholly credible. Another Christian White winner.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Affirm Press.

Thank you to Affirm Press for allowing me access to read this eccentric book prior to its upcoming release 26th October 2021.

Wild Place “-it had been a place of horror then, and a place of horror now.” You do NOT want to miss out on this book. During the late 1980s, a teenager, Tracie Reed goes missing after a deep and meaningful conversation with her mother. We then start to meet direct and indirect characters of the neighbourhood and that is where twist after twist begins.

Christian White has a way of imbedding the brilliance that is Aussie humour into a macabre story. His stories just keep getting better and better! Post-story, his acknowledgments humanise him and are an uplifting boost after the events his tales bring us to face.

Wild Place by Christian White is certainly a deceptively wild ride.

Set on the Morning Peninsula in Victoria, Australia in the summer of 1989, this gripping mystery is set in an idyllic suburban neighbourhood where children are free to roam the small patch of nature called the Wild Place.

Local high school English teacher Tom Witter is mourning his eldest son moving out of home and avoiding making his way though the list of jobs his wife has made for him to do on his summer holidays.

When his ex-student Tracie goes missing, and the police are convinced she has runaway, he begins to investigate her disappearance.

Suspicion falls on the son of Tom's next-door neighbour, Sean. With his goth looks and reclusive ways, Sean stands out in this white bread neighbourhood, and Tom is convinced Sean knows more about Tracie than he is admitting.

But everyone is lying., everyone is hiding secrets and this page turning, slow-burn thriller builds up to a climax that I definitely did not see coming.

Highly recommended for lovers of crime and mystery stories.


Thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for the advance reader's copy of this book.

Wild Place by Christian White is an amazing read! I loved his two previous novels, The Nowhere Child and The Wife and the Widow and this one I also loved and highly recommend it as a heart thumping and suspenseful with a surprising end.

Set December 1989 and January 1990, in a fictitious outer suburb of Melbourne called Camp Hill which has a large undeveloped forest area that they call Wild Place, we are introduced to families who live there - nothing out of the ordinary until a teenage girl, Tracie Reed, goes missing. While the police see her as a runaway her divorcing parents don’t believe it and get posters to have displayed to try and find her. Her English teacher, Tom Witter, also lives in the area and he comes on board by putting up posters and actively investigating her disappearance, believing the Wild Place is somehow connected as is the surfacing of hints of satanic undercurrents…. even one of his son’s is involved in a ouija board activity that appears related. Tom’s involvement and subsequent actions lead to some unexpected turn of events.

This is a psychological thriller that is even more scary because it’s setting - a seemingly ordinary suburban neighbourhood.

Highly recommended read.

Thank you to Netgalley and Affirm Press for a copy to read and review.

This was my first Christian White novel and I finally understand what everyone has been going on about. I can’t wait to pick up his others.

It had me absolutely hooked from the start and had trouble putting it down. I went down so many paths of what I thought was going on only to be completely shocked at the end.

I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading thrillers and it has been one of my favourites of the year.

I want to thank Affirm Press and Netgalley for generously providing me with this book in exchange for an honest review.

If you enjoyed The Nowhere Child & The Wife and the Widow then you are going to enjoy Christian White’s new book Wild Place which will be available for purchase on October 26th.

Set at the end of 1989 in the small suburb of Camp Hill in Victoria I first thought this book was going to be a domestic thriller about a girl going missing who the police assume has run away to then having the weird neighbourhood teenager getting the blame. But I was totally wrong!! Christian White had me twisting and turning with each turn of the page with a few shocked NO’S thrown in!

It’s a great writer who can keep you guessing right to the end and continually leads you in a totally different direction. Another gripping, page-turning read!

Thanks to @affirmpress and @netgalley for the e-ARC.

I can rarely resist a mystery set in a suburban neighbourhood, especially when it promises time travel back to the eighties. It’s fun to be reminded of a reality where kids played out in scrubland just like “the wild place” and there were no mobile phones to keep track of your every movement, and instead of the nosy parkers on social media there was neighbourhood watch.

When a teenage girl goes missing from the suburb of Camp Hill, a close-knit neighbourhood that borders an area of wild bushland called simply “Wild Place”, the whole community is thrown into turmoil. Worried parents forbid their children to play in the bush. Emergency neighbourhood watch meetings are being hastily arranged. And of course suspicion falls on the one oddball in the neighbourhood, Sean, a teenage boy who has been seen brandishing the tattoo of a pentagram and is spending most of his time indoors listening to heavy metal music.

Like most neighbourhood mysteries, Wild Place relies on the slow unravelling of secrets the residents of Camp hill keep close to their hearts. Even Tom Witter, a high school teacher at the local Christian college, is perhaps not as lily white as he pretends to be. As residents decide to take matters into their own hands and point the finger at the most likely culprit – in their eyes at least – things soon escalate.

I’m not sure why I didn’t love this book more, seeing it had all the elements I usually enjoy in a slow burning mystery: characters with secrets to hide, time travel back to the eighties and a few twists and turns that surprised me. But somehow I found it difficult to engage with any of the characters at an emotional level, which made this just an ok read for me. I appreciated the author’s tongue-in-cheek humour sprinkled through the pages and the characters’ dialogue; the many references to religion not so much. I also thought that the satanic rituals featured only very peripherally and could have been used much more to create the spooky atmosphere I had hoped for. There were also too many side characters that added little to the overall plot in the end. I remember saying very similar things about White’s first novel THE NOWHERE CHILD, so maybe his style just doesn’t quite gel with me (though I really enjoyed his previous book THE WIFE AND THE WIDOW). That said, this was an easy popcorn read to devour in a couple of sittings and was entertaining enough to keep me reading.

WILD PLACE will appeal to readers who enjoy slower, character driven mysteries featuring neighbourhood dynamics and a large cast of characters. Set in Australia, it is also full of that slight tongue-in-cheek humour that charactersises many Australian novels and allows a bit of a chuckle whilst trying to solve the mystery. If you usually enjoy White’s writing style, then you should definitely pick this one up for some satanic time travel to the eighties.

Another thrilling Christian White novel - what’s not to love! I found myself getting a little frustrated at the characters bad decisions in an investigation that seems like they shouldn’t stick their hand in - and then you find out that maybe they are a bit more invested in the outcome after all. Flew through this at the end, definitely did not expect to hear from that character on the Walkman - classic Christian white always gives you a plot twist that leaves you thinking how you didn’t catch it!

“Things like this weren’t supposed to happen in places like Camp Hill, land of bright green lawns and little rainbows that glimmered in sprinkler showers.”

If you don’t know this kind of small town, everybody-knows-everybody, suburban idyll, think TV shows like Wisteria Drive or even those cosy English village detective series. This is suburban Australia. People hold secrets. People die.

Set in the dying days of the 1980s, a teenage girl disappears. Police seem to not take it seriously but then the attention of the local neighbourhood watch is engaged and locals talk of taking action, particularly schoolteacher Tom Witter.

Wild Place explodes the myth of ‘nice’ suburbia, exposing human nature at its worst, and shining a light on the ability to do terrible things out of despair, guilt, fear and a need to protect. Family is complicated and the question arises: how well do we know our nearest and dearest? How well do we know ourselves?

Tom felt “He had pierced an invisible barrier that surrounded suburbia and stepped through it.” Tom crumbles before your eyes. This rational, normal, moral, law-abiding man is revealed as a human being, with all the faults and foibles that it entails.

The cast of characters are described with wit and affection, are believable and well-realised. The one exception is the missing girl, Tracie. Despite teaching her, Tom thinks he really doesn’t know Tracie at all, and I felt the same. This is such a clever way of portraying a girl who is missing. You can never get to really know her because she isn’t there.

White has a way of ramping up the tension impressively when you least expect it. You think you know how a scene will end but he does something unexpected but brilliant. The plotting is excellent and the pace is compelling.

A highly recommended read.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #AffirmPress for the eARC.

A tight knit community is shocked by the disappearance of Tracie. The action takes place about three weeks after Tracie’s disappearance, in that quiet time between Christmas and New Year. The story is centred around the Witter family- Tom, Connie and their children Marty and Kieran. Tom is a high school teacher at the local Christian College and a keen member of the local Neighbourhood Watch. He is horrified by Tracie’s disappearance. The story moves along at a good pace and the quiet neighbourhood starts to unravel, there were many twists along the way none of which I saw coming. The scene of Mornington Peninsula during summer is familiar to me and felt very real.

This took me right back to the summer on 1989. The days when the family watched the one and only television in the house together, and a Viennetta Icecream cake was a fancy dessert you brought out for guests. (Do they still sell these? I've got the taste for one now.)
Tracie Reed has gone missing and there's clues that it could be satanic cults behind it. I had expected this to be a tad scary, having not read a Christian White book before (although his first two come highly recommended and are both sitting on my TBR pile). It wasn't. Instead it was an insight into what it actually might be like in your own neighbourhood if a girl went missing. Neighbourhood gossip, a community that sets out to do something to protect their own families from who they perceive is the guilty party, and lots of secrets going on behind closed doors.
I loved it. A definite five stars from me. And those Christian Whites on my TBR pile just got bumped to the top.

"A man was never so dangerous as when he had nothing left to lose."

#WildPlace #NetGalley

In the summer is 1989, Tracie Reed has gone missing. Neighbour and former teacher of Tracie’s, Tom Witter, just can’t let it go. Soon he finds himself chasing a trail of satanic rituals, symbols and horror stories.

I RAN to NetGalley when I realised this book was available as an ARC, because I mean it when I say I have ADORED everything Christian White has produced. This one was no different. I devoured it in a day, the twists and turns had me absolutely hooked. I was feeling disappointed by the ending, before the final page had me with my jaw on the FLOOR, changing my feelings immediately. Lovers of Christian White - prepare for a thrilling ride.