I was so pleasantly surprised with this story! Grant is masterful in her literary style. I thought this would be just another contemporary mystery/thriller heavy on the action but with less depth. On the contrary, the character development and vivid scenery descriptions added beautifully to the overall plot. Emlyn is somewhat complicated and humble but draws others to her, in negative and positive ways. After recovering from a crisis, she begins to find herself again when a friend disappears. She comfortably immerses herself in nature to try and find her. What unfolds is both unexpected and poignant. I also appreciate that a captivating story can be told without excessive language and spice. Grant handled that with grace as well.
My first objective is to go and read These Silent Woods. I am intrigued by this new-to-me writer.
Thanks to #NetGalley and St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books for this ARC.

We start The Nature of Disappearing as Emlyn is living a life estranged from her best friend, Janessa, and ex-boyfriend, Tyler. She had a dropped call from Janessa and hasn’t been in contact with her since. Then she learns from a news report that Janessa and her boyfriend are potentially missing. When Tyler, also a childhood friend of Janessa, shows up to ask Emlyn for help finding Janessa I was hooked. I immediately thought of how this story could go, but boy was I wrong. Kimi Cunningham Grant takes us through the wilderness in this story and vividly shows us what it’s like to hike and survive treacherous hikes. This was definitely more of a “slow burn” story. I would have really enjoyed more focus on the relationships and maybe less on the wilderness aspect. Read this if you are a hiker or love reading about the outdoors! Overall 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur books for this ARC through NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

The nature of relationships set in a wilderness setting, this book was not a thriller but had a mystery element. I very much enjoyed the author's previous book "These Silent Woods' which featured themes of man versus man and man versus nature and was at heart about the love between a father and his child. This book tackles friendship but was not as successful in creating a meaningful story. Emlyn is a young woman who lives in a Airstream trailer and serves as a hunting and fishing guide. Emlyn had a best friend named Janessa who she hasn't heard from in awhile until one day she receives a dropped call which worried her. When Emlyn receives a message from her ex-boyfriend Tyler, she realizes she isn't the only one worried about her friend. It seems Janessa has become an Instagram influencer and has been traveling with her boyfriend Bush doing a "van life" series, but hasn't posted in several days. Janessa and Tyler grew up together and were best friends.

This sounded like an exciting set-up but the majority of the book is about flashbacks and I felt there were too many which didn't further the story. The flashbacks show how Emlyn was a shy, directionless girl who was taken under he wing of beautiful, rich and outgoing Janessa. Janessa directed Emlyn's life even telling her who to date, what clothes to wear and where she should live. That all changed when Emlyn began to date Tyler who knew Janessa since childhood. After Janessa forbids Emlyn from dating Tyler, their relationship fell apart. Later we find out Tyler had a lot of issues which resulted in him leaving Emlyn abandoned in the wilderness which almost cost her her life. Is Janessa really missing and can Emlyn trust Tyler who she is still attracted to? The mystery portion of the book begins when Emlyn and Tyler set out to track Janessa in the wilds of Idaho. .

I enjoyed the mystery part but didn't feel that any of the characters were all that interesting. Vardan, a local forest ranger who has feelings for Emlyn seemed like he was a lot older than he was because of his name and the only thing we know about him is he reads Amish romance stories and spends all his free time with Rev, an elderly woman who holds church services in her cottage. There is a story about addiction to pain pills but it is not written in an accurate way. At one point Emlyn has a ruptured appendix and after taking one pill she is filled with some kind of joyous energy when in reality she would be feeling relief from her pain. It is wrong to suggest that people cannot accept pain relief after surgery because they will immediately become addicted. I wanted to like Janessa but she seemed very overbearing and she seemed to exist only to react to Emlyn and Tyler. Beautiful nature descriptions but the relationship story left me unsatisfied. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this ARC for review.

In The Nature of Disappearing, the main character, Emlyn, sets off with her ex-boyfriend to find out what happened to her best friend, who has recently gone missing on a van life expedition. Through flashbacks, the reader uncovers the tumultuous backstory of what led to these strained relationships in present day as Emlyn and her ex close in on what’s really going on with the friend’s disappearance.

I really enjoy the way Grant writes slow burn suspense and weaves in nature and wilderness themes! While this book didn’t have the emotional punch I loved about her debut, These Silent Woods, I still appreciated Grant’s ability to tell an entertaining story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Through the past and present, this book tells the story of a wilderness guide who must team up with the man who ruined her life many years ago when their mutual friend goes missing.


I really liked this one by Cunningham Grant. The suspense and pacing was addicting, the main character was likable, and the setting was really fun for me. I was genuinely surprised a few times with how the story turned out. I loved the character development and how Emlyn grew throughout the story.

The ending felt very abrupt to me and I wish we had more story there - that was really the main thing I didn’t like!

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the free copy in exchange for honest review!

My rating: 4/5

This is the second story I have read by this author and I enjoyed it immensely. There was a lot of action and adventure and a lot of suspense. I can’t wait to see what Ms. Grant is bringing us next.


I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

2.75ish

The synopsis for this really should've been: "two people walk through the woods". Ok, so that's oversimplifying it a bit, but I cannot get over how much of the book was devoted to following two characters as they hiked. And I realize that the author was going for a character-driven story, but I felt that, being that this is marketed as a mystery/thriller, the overarching mystery should have been a lot stronger. In the end, the mysterious elements of this story were pretty lackluster. The reveal of what was going on and a certain character's plan made very little sense, and one of the main twists was very obvious to me.

To be clear, I think this is a well-written book. The prose is nice. It's the plot that's lacking. Ultimately, I think this is one of those books I have no strong feelings about. Thanks to Minotaur Books for granting me access!!

This was a bit of a letdown. I found it moved way too slowly and the characters weren’t likeable or interesting enough for this. The slow burn worked in “These Silent Woods” but sadly, not in this novel. It was all a little obvious as well.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I was eager - and nervous - to read The Nature of Disappearing by Kimi Cunningham Grant because her previous novel, These Silent Woods, was one of my favorite books of 2021. How would the author follow up a near-perfect novel? I’m thankful that early reviews tempered my expectations because Nature was good ... but not nearly as engaging as Woods. 3.5 stars rounded up.

Set in rural Idaho, the contemporary storyline follows Emilyn, a skilled wilderness guide, whose life is small and secluded by choice. It’s disrupted when former boyfriend Tyler suddenly appears with concerns that their mutual friend Janessa is missing. Emilyn agrees to use her tracking skills to help Tyler search for Janessa, and segments of their trek alternate with flashbacks to moments in Emilyn’s past, from her childhood and meeting Janessa to the good and bad times with Tyler. Their discoveries increase in tension until the full truth is revealed.

I had the rare opportunity to consume this audiobook, narrated by Emily Pike Stewart, in a single day while doing mundane spreadsheet work at the office. As a result, I had no issues following the non-chronological story, but I may have if I read or listened over several sessions. The story has a small cast of characters, several of whom are unlikeable, but I really liked Rev and Varden. I’m not familiar with the Idaho wilderness or trekking through it so any plot issues regarding these topics were lost on me.

One of the most meaningful things in my reading life is finding unexpected elements of faith woven into “general market” novels. I love that Ms. Grant does this so well; it was my favorite aspect of this tale. I was also intrigued by Emilyn’s early fascination with a dictionary which fostered her practice of choosing a single word to describe people, including herself.

I’m grateful to Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio for review copies of this novel.

When you have high-level tracking skills & your ex-best friend goes missing in the woods, you basically have to go find her; even if that means teaming up with the ex-boyfriend who almost got you killed…

Emlyn’s life imploded a few years back, but thanks to the kindness of the forest ranger who found her & the local reverend-type person who took her in, she’s now a relatively happy & more confident wilderness guide who loves getting to enjoy all the natural beauty Idaho has to offer. But she hasn’t completely moved on from her past, & she’s less than thrilled when her ex shows up at her place of work, begging her to help him locate someone she used to be bosom friends with (a la Anne of Green Gables). Emlyn reluctantly agrees, but the deeper the search goes the more she wonders what this trip will ultimately end up costing her…

I loved the appreciation for the great outdoors I felt in this book, & enjoyed Emlyn’s quirk of thinking of one word to encompass a person’s essence. Emlyn’s character growth was slow but hard-won & authentic, & the female friendship dynamic between her & Janessa was very relatable. This is my first time reading this author’s work & I’m looking forward to enjoying more from her in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley & Minotaur for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you are in the mood for a book about Forrest Rangers…..this is a book you should read.
I really enjoyed the wilderness aspect in the story. Lots and lots of information shared about plants that are poisonous, how to trap animals and just general, how to survive in the wilderness.
The mystery was pretty intense and sinister.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book.
Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
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US pub date: 6/18/24
Genre: suspense
Quick summary: Wilderness guide Emlyn hasn't spoken to her ex Tyler in years - until he shows up to tell her that her #vanlife influencer BFF Jenessa is missing, and they team up to search for her.

THIS SILENT WOODS was a great read, so I was excited to return to the woods with Kimi Cunningham Grant! #vanlife has been ripped from the headlines to become a huge topic in contemporary fiction, but this book felt different due to the strong sense of place and characterization of Emlyn. I felt really connected to her and Tyler on their search, and there were just enough twists to keep me interested. I read this book in one sitting on a plane, and think other summer readers will also enjoy reading it quickly!

Thank you to Minotaur Books for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly I’m not really sure how I felt about this one. It was very up and down for me. Started off catching my attention and I thought I was in for a good ride. But after a while it started to drag. It would pick back up a bit and then drag some more. There were a few good twists but also a few predictable ones. Overall it was pretty okay.

I was excited to get to check out The Nature of Disappearing by Kimi Cunningham Grant because I had checked out Kimi’s other book These Silent Woods not too long ago and enjoyed it. An aspect I enjoyed about These Silent Woods was the setting and Kimi’s ability to paint a setting for the reader, so knowing the setting in this one would be similar I was excited to get into it.

When reading the blurb for The Nature of Disappearing I was instantly interested because the plot reminded me of a recent true crime case. The Gabbi Petito case I personally didn’t follow closely at the time because I was horrified by how it was being handled by the media, and the way it became a conspiracy theory, and online sleuth case before Gabbi was even found. The Nature of Disappearing hits on similar issues when popular Van Life vlogger Janessa and her boyfriend Bush go missing and it’s noticed by many when they stop posting on social media and uploading on their regular days on YouTube. Quickly picked up by the media, but with very little evidence to go by, the situation is quickly blown out of the water by the media and thrown into a frenzy. Sitting in a coffee shop after taking a client fishing Emlyn is shocked to see her old best friend pop up on the news with a missing person under her picture. What she further can’t suspect is that her ex-boyfriend Tyler who almost destroyed her life five years earlier comes to her looking for her help to find Janessa. Tyler, convinced that with her lifelong outdoorsman skills, Emlyn will be able to find Janessa faster than anyone else, Emlyn is forced to question if she wants to leave the warm safe life she has now created for herself to enter into a potential lion’s den.

I gave The Nature of Disappearing a 7/10. I enjoyed the book a lot in the first bit, but some of the peaks and twists in my opinion were a bit predictable leading me to guess where the book was going to go before we got there. As in These Silent Woods, a previous book I read of Kimi’s, the characters and setting are truly what make this book. This book is labelled as a thriller, suspense, crime fiction, novel. While that’s very true in some parts I wouldn’t say that this book is very mildly thrilling. I don’t say that as a bad thing at all, but if you’re going into this book thinking it’s going to be filled with thrilling twists and gut-wrenching suspense, this isn’t one of them. The thrill and suspense in it I feel like fits the pace of the book better. If it was super heavy on those themes it wouldn’t match the serene call setting that Kimi was creating to hide the chaos. It was interesting because oftentimes I would get swept up into her descriptions and forget why the characters were in the woods at that moment, and it wasn’t for something as beautiful as the setting we were reading was. It felt like you were with Emlyn walking in the woods with her at moments, and it made the book have this kind of calm sense to it when in reality it was anything but.

Throughout the book, we get past and present perspectives from Emlyn. In the present she tells us about what’s going on with her and Tyler’s search for Janessa, and in the past why her relationship with both Janessa and Tyler ended. I found I enjoyed the past perspectives a bit more than the present ones, and while there was lots of suspense at the end of the present parts, the past parts all together felt a bit more gripping in terms of the suspense. I felt like The Nature of Disappearing is more of a book that focuses on the repair and destruction of relationships, the fragility of friendship, and overcoming trauma. It made it more so of a book where we see if things can be repaired between Emlyn and Tyler despite everything that went on in their past, and if repairing their relationship can help them find a person they both care about. The drama of the mystery of what happened to Janessa is definitely interesting, but the past behind Emlyn and Tyler is what got my interest more. I just wanted to know what he did to her to end this seemingly really good relationship.

I would recommend checking out The Nature of Disappearing by Kimi Cunningham Grant if you love a character-centred novel with a strong interesting setting. It was a great weekend read that didn’t take me long to get through at all, but that’s also because it was enjoyable and hard to put down.

Thank you to NetGalley, Minotaur Books and author Kimi Cunningham Grant for this eARC to read and review!!

This was a captivating and atmospheric slow-burn mystery filled with suspense and suspicion all the way through … never really knowing who to trust and what was going on right up to the end. I really enjoyed the deep, wilderness setting and thought that it added to the sense of underlying danger at every turn … not just from the players in the story but from nature itself. The dual timelines did an awesome job of revealing each character and building the plot. I also loved the sprinkling of faith, hope, found family and community and was rooting for our MC, Emlyn, to find peace and long needed rest in the word trust. Overall an enjoyable and light thriller with a great message!

This one wasn’t my favorite but it’s not bad per se. I wish there was a better way to phrase this considering it’s a book, but there was to much wordiness for my liking. I’ve never been a huge fan of that writing style as it’s very clunky to me and tends to pull me out of the story. This one starts off slow but picks up a bit a little before the halfway mark. I think the pacing struggles because of the inter-splicing of flashbacks throughout the book. They provide necessary context to the characters and the current events of the plot but the timing of them and how the information is so sparingly parsed out makes it feel like everything’s dragging on and detracts from the overall flow of the story. While most of the characters read as very two dimensional I will say Emlyn was a strong, well written character. I really loved how much depth there was to her and how she evolved throughout the book. The story went in a completely different direction than what I was thinking it would take so I did like that there were some surprises but overall I don’t think I’m the right reader for this particular book.

The Nature of Disappearing is a brilliantly crafted and gorgeously written suspense story that fully transports you to the middle of the wild unknown - and keeps you hooked through the very last page.

I am such a massive fan of @kimicgrant and how she tells stories, and this latest just cements me in place as a forever cheerleader of her work. I of course, love a mystery and a book brimming with suspense (which this plot has by the handful), and a LIVE FOR books that are so atmospherically rich that you can’t help but feel like you are right in the story. Reading this book had me convinced I was a well trained outdoorsman who could easily track a missing person in the wild.

Let me assure you - I am not. But that’s how beautifully written and perfectly detailed this story is! It will make you fully delusional about your own skills!

I was also pleasantly surprised by how this story unfolded which was in no way, whatsoever, the direction I would have guessed. The pacing was perfect and the flashbacks to Emlyn’s past were the perfect cookie crumbs to follow as the action and tension grew.

No spoilers - but honestly if you aren’t reading this this summer you are nuts. This is IDEAL summer reading and I can only promise you a deeply compelling story that will entertain and delight. What more could you ask for.

Many thanks to @minotaur_books for the copy and the exceedingly perfect swag.

The Nature of Disappearing got better after the first quarter of the book or so. I did think the twist could have had a little more punch to it.
I didnt connect with the characters as well as I wish i would have. I thought the description made it sound like this book would be amazing. Definitely more of a slow burn and not as thrilling as I had hoped! Overall a good book though.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

If suspense/mystery/adventure/survival is a genre, Kimi Cunningham Grant is the queen of it. These Silent Woods is one of my favorite books of all time (I’ve read it 3 times), so I was thrilled when I got an early copy of The Nature of Disappearing from @netgalley. Thank you for sharing it with me!

Summary: Emlyn doesn’t let herself think about the past; how she and her best friend, Janessa, barely speak anymore or how Tyler, the love of her life, left her half dead on the side of the road three years ago.

Her new life is simple and safe. She lives alone in her Airstream trailer and works as a fishing and hunting guide in scenic Idaho. Her closest friends are the community’s makeshift reverend and a handsome Forest Service ranger who took her in at her lowest.

When Tyler shows up with the news that Janessa is missing, Emlyn is propelled back into the world she worked so hard to forget. Janessa has become a social media star, documenting her #vanlife adventures with her rugged boyfriend. She hasn’t posted lately, though, and when Emlyn realizes the most recent photo doesn’t match up with its caption, she reluctantly joins Tyler to find her old friend. As the two trace Janessa’s path through miles of wild country, Emlyn can’t deny the chemistry still crackling between them. But the deeper they press into the wilderness, the more she begins to suspect that a darker truth lies in the woods―and that Janessa isn’t the only one in danger.

I’ve seen mixed reviews for this one, but I loved it! My husband and I enjoy backpacking so I was really able to connect with it. I love how the setting feels like a character itself with how well KCG describes the wilderness and its effect on Emlyn, Janessa and Tyler. It’s a slower-paced book, but I was hooked from start to finish and highly recommend it if you enjoyed These Silent Woods!

I absolutely loved These Silent Woods and was so excited to read this book. I found myself caught up in the outdoors adventure and the mystery. The setting in Idaho was a bonus that I throughly enjoyed. The book felt scenic and the writing brought out the beauty of the great outdoors.

I was interested in Emlyn’s story and how she got to the place she was physically and emotionally, but this part of the story was told entirely through flashbacks. There were four different timelines in the flashbacks which was way too many. A majority of the book was spent looking back instead of on the current timeline and mystery. This impacted the flow and made the story feel choppy and slow.

I loved the small glimpses we got of the potential love interest. I was rooting for him and hoping for more of his story. I also really enjoyed Emlyn’s friendship with Janessa. It showed the highs and lows of long lasting friendship. The theme of being there for each other even when time and distance separate people was powerful.

This has some Christian elements in it, but they felt like they were thrown in to make it Christian fiction. They didn’t add to the story and left me feeling lackluster.

This book contains no profanity and has kissing only.