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.
.

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.

I loved Grant's first book, These Silent Woods, very much and was really looking forward to her new novel, The Nature of Disappearing. In this book, Emlyn, a fishing and tracking guide, joins forces with Tyler, her ex-boyfriend, to find their mutual friend who has disappeared with her boyfriend. Emlyn and Tyler were in love several years earlier but he betrayed her in a big way.. She has moved on to establish her life in a new location and has made some good friends and a possible love interest is there also. She still has some feelings for Tyler and it seems Tyler does also. This book is filled with tension between Emlyn and Tyler as well as tension around finding their friend and figuring out why she has disappeared. The book has short chapters that move it along really quickly. I finished it in one day.

While I didn't love it as much as These Silent Woods, I will read whatever Grant writes next. i wanted more from this book including more side character development and more nuanced relationships and characters. I'm rating it 3.5 stars which rounds up to 4.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Minotaur Publishing for this book

Formal review to come! I always appreciate the atmospheric settings this author is able to capture in her books. The setting here is beautiful, but also ruthless (as much of Mother Nature meeting human kind can be). I loved Emlyns character. Her tragedy became her strength, and though not the same circumstances….my soul resonated with that. With the idea of people, a community, surrounding you and showing you love when you need it most.

Beautifully written, suspenseful, but touching about finding yourself, your people, and letting go of the past that has hurt you.

This book tells the story of a young woman, reunited with her ex on a search to find her former best friend — whom they believe to be missing — deep in the wilderness of Idaho. Like These Silent Woods, the wilderness atmosphere gave the book a strong sense of place, but I thought the author did a really good job of not letting the setting overtake the story.

I thought this book was a perfect blend of character and plot. The main character, Emlyn, was complex and nuanced, with a tumultuous past that really made her appreciate her as a character. I loved the way the story explored her complicated friendship with her best friend, Janessa, through the ups and downs of their relationship. I also loved the development of the characters with which Emlyn found community.

The story itself also kept me engaged. There was definitely enough to where I felt the plot was always moving forward and I thought the pacing and timing of different reveals throughout the book was so well done.

I don’t really have any complaints about this novel. I really enjoyed the time I spent reading it and I’ll definitely continue to read whatever Cunningham Grant writes!

After loving These Silent Woods I had very high expectations for The Nature of Disappearing. And for me it absolutely delivered. The setting descriptions really made me feel like I was in the outdoors.

The plot of this story gave me Gabby Petito case vibes. The narrator for the book was very engaging and kept me entertained throughout the story. This is more of a slow burn type plot.

I really liked Emlyn and I enjoyed experiencing her growth. With this story told in alternating past/present we really get a chance to see how far she’s come.

If you loved These Silent Woods you should definitely read this one!

I listened to this book via audio courtesy of Macmillan Audio and NetGalley.

Emlyn, her best friend Janessa and Tyler. Struggles to be with Tyler against warnings from Janessa and breaking their friendship. Forging ahead with a shattered relationship. Emlyn’s journey of survival and trust. Emotion and truth to find ones self. Recommended read.

When I pick up a Cummingham Grant novel, I know I will be gifted an atmospheric read. This writer has a way with capturing the setting in a way that make it seem as if it's a main character with a story of its own to tell.

Join Emlyn, a wilderness guide, as she navigates the treacherous terrain of her past and the present, where the lines between reality and danger blur, and the truth is as elusive as the wilderness itself. In hopes to bring her former best friend Janessa back from a #vanlife trip gone wrong, Emlyn discovers you truly never know someone. Sometimes not even yourself.

"The Nature of Disappearing" is a suspenseful and adventurous tale of survival, nature, and the great outdoors, with a dash of romance and a deep exploration of the human spirit.

I could not be more excited to handsell The Nature of Disappearing. Kimi Cunningham Grant's novel These Silent Woods has consistently been a bestseller in our store, and I believe this one will be just as popular. The characters are relatable--flawed, hurt, and working to overcome their pasts. They make mistakes, they don't communicate like they should, but the bonds of friendship remain strong. I loved the pace of this book, and could not wait to find out what had happened between Emlyn, Janessa, and Tyler. The setting, as in These Silent Woods, is a character unto itself. Kimi's writing makes the reader feel as if they are in the woods with the characters, feeling the eyes of the wilderness as they move closer and closer into the unknown. One final thought--as a bookseller, it is hard to know which qualities of a book a customer will find offensive. One thing I love about this book is that I can recommend it to anyone, young adult or senior citizen, without worry. There are triggering things in the book, but they are so well-written and kept off of the page that it makes my job easy. I hope that we get many more amazing stories from this incredibly talented author!

Thank you to the publisher and to netgalley. This book had so much potential for me with the perfect setting at a wilderness alike setting. This story was very slow until around the 80% mark and I couldn’t connect to the characters. I LOVED the wonderful descriptions of the wilderness and animals.