Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur for the opportunity to review an advanced edition of The Nature of Disappearing.

This book has a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a romance? A Thriller? A Mystery? A Chick Lit friendship book? A Coming of Age? I believe the answer is, a bit of all of these. The problem is, it doesn't do any of these well. It begins as more of a romance, and finishes as a coming of age novel, but even for that, the characters behave much younger than they are told to be in the book. If I let the age go (I believe at one point it was said they were 28) and I let the characters in my mind be in their early 20s, maybe a bit more believable. Some of the characters barely scratched the surface of who they were- were only there to move the story along, though they were framed as a principle in the book. I felt there were plot points, historical facts, and enlightenments coming out of left field. I finished the book, parts of the story I enjoyed and I loved the wildness and the wilderness of the setting. I am sure there are some audiences that will love this book. I was just one that wanted the scope a little more narrow, details a little more flushed out, and the characters dug into a little more to get to the meat of the story- not trying to hit a little bit of everything. After trying hard to be a thriller (I think?) the book comes off as fluff. Decent beach read if you are expecting romance and friendship discovery more than thriller mystery. 2.5-3 stars.

I’m a big fan of the author’s most recent work, These Silent Woods, so I immediately requested The Nature of Disappearing on NetGalley and I’m grateful I was able to read this ahead of publication. This is a slow burn mystery that ultimately builds to a series of reveals. The pacing was definitely slower than I would prefer and unfortunately the mystery just wasn’t that compelling.

The chapters alternate between past and present in a way that kept me interested. The author’s signature atmospheric setting is definitely a highlight in this book. The book details the difficulties of loving someone who struggles with addiction and also carries a thread of gospel truth that is encouraging. Overall, though this book wasn’t my favorite I look forward to the author’s next work.

Many thanks to Minotaur Books for the e-ARC via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

My fellow booksellers and I are constantly recommending These Silent Woods to our customers, and I was so excited to get my hands on Grant's newest book. It did not disappoint! Along with the beautiful prose about wilderness and wildness I was expecting, this story also had a fresh cast of characters and the twists really did keep coming right up until the end. I'd still recommend These Silent Woods as a first read for those unfamiliar with Grant, but The Nature of Disappearing has wide appeal and is the perfect bite-sized mystery.

I want to start by giving a big thank you to @netgalley and @kimicgrant for generously gifting me this digital ARC! This book has been (still is) in my Amazon cart for months! I will admit, I favor ‘These Silent Woods’ just a tad more, but this one was such a great read!!

🤍Mystery/ Thriller
🤍Missing Person(s)
🤍Broken love story
🤍Survival
🤍Childhood Trauma

The love story aspect of this book came as a surprise to me. But I liked it a lot! The author has a way of making you feel for every character she writes! I found myself feeling empathy for characters I probably shouldn’t have. Everyone has a story. Everyone has a past. Everyone has their own baggage. I would recommend giving this book a try! I absolutely recommend checking out “These Silent Woods” also!

Thank you so much to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for this advanced readers copy of The Nature of Disappearing by Kimi Cunningham Grant.

I absolutely adored the author’s last novel, These Silent Woods, so I couldn’t get my hands on her most recent work fast enough. In this story, we meet Emlyn, a young fishing guide and loner who alludes to a traumatic past. When Emlyn’s former friend and van life social media star goes missing, another friend from their past shows up begging for Emlyn’s help.

While I enjoyed the setup and setting for this novel, I was pretty antsy with the pacing. Told in dual timeline, it takes a sweet forever to fully understand what happened with Emlyn and these people from her past. It wasn’t until nearly 60 percent of the story that things started to get interesting. Ultimately, the resolution was pretty forgettable and anticlimactic.

I will be the first to admit, I almost gave up on this book! Then about half way through I was absolutely hooked! I was so invested in Emlyn and Janessa’s friendship, I had to know the end! Not to mention the end for poor Emlyn herself! The description in this book are very detailed, so detailed I felt like I was right there with the characters! I will say however I was disappointed with the ending, I needed more! I’m hoping there will be a second book where we can all see what comes next for emlyn and Janessa!!

Very good suspense and some "never saw them coming" twists.
Emiyn has started a new life in the wilderness as a guide for an out lands
tour company and has chosen to move on from the life she used to know.
She is forging a new future when the past reaches out to grab her. She
receives a call from a former very dear friend who had become just a
"sort of" casual acquaintance over the past couple of years. When she tries
to respond to her friend and never gets through with no further contact from
her she begins to think that something might have happened to Janessa.
Connecting with another former friend who is also concerned about her
sudden disappearance off the social media grid, they team up to follow her camping tracks.
The story is captivating but a bit eye rolling at times - some of the re-connection scenes between
Emilyn and her former boyfriend are a bit hard to believe,
All in all, the story is well developed and moves along and the characters are all very well defined
and easy to understand.

Grant has crafted another addictive, suspenseful mystery that will keep readers on the edge of their seats! After being left to die in the forest by her ex Tyler, Emlyn has slowly built a new life for herself on the edge of the Bridger-Teton National Forest with a kind pastoral Rev and gentle Forest Service agent Varden to call her friends. When Tyler returns out of the blue begging for her help as a guide to search for her old and now missing best friend Janessa, Emlyn must consider how far into the wilderness she’s willing to go to restore a broken friendship and save Janessa’s life. Grant is masterful at building snowballing tension and unease and an unrelenting sense that something is Not Right. As with These Silent Woods, Grant paints beautifully detailed pictures of the backcountry Tyler and Emlyn hike through to search for their missing friend. This book switches back and forth between the history of Tyler, Emlyn, and Janessa and how it relates to current events. (It did feel a little bit choppy to interrupt the flow so much and one of the only things I didn’t like about this book.) The story is at atmospherically suspensful; Grant’s writing shows sometimes you don’t need car chases and fights to build tension; all you need is a pair of yellow eyes flickering in the darkness. I could not put this book down; Grant perfectly captures the dual sense of fear and awe that deep wilderness inspires. I only wish the book had at least one more chapter!

-Readers should be aware part of the plot revolves around around a side character’s heavy drug addiction.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book and was not required to give a review. All opinions expressed above are t own.

3.5 stars. I have really enjoyed previous books by this author and this new one did not disappoint. Once again, the setting is in a part of the country that I a not familiar with so I learned that maybe I need to broaden where I travel as the wilderness is far more exciting than I knew.

Main character Emlynn tries to keep to herself as much as possible when not leading people on guided hikes through the woods or on fishing trips. She has a past boyfriend who abandoned her to die and she s avoiding him at all costs. Her former friend is now missing and the old boyfriend appeals to Emlynn to help track her in case she is in trouble. Of course this ignites feelings for him again as he tries to prove that he is no longer that person that he was before. Her walls are up to protect her, yet feelings do seep in.

Her forest ranger friend and Rev, an unofficial pastor, have kept her company for the past couple of years and have tried to help shield her from the boyfriend. They really have been her life companions and she is afraid she has made them angry by her decision to try to find her friend.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance book. Honest opinions expressed here are my own and are freely given.

I loved this book of friendship and love with Emlyn and Janessa. I loved the back and forth of time and how the story unfolded for Emlyn. Her struggles with life, love and Tyler. The story is about a hike through the wilderness, through the tragedy of friendship, through the valleys of love lost. As Emlyn works through her past trauma she discovers herself and her ability to see past her past mistakes.

First of all, thank you NetGalley for the Arc. This is my first book by Kimi Cunningham. My interest in this book stemmed from the title and description. If there is any sort of hiking in a book I’m immediately interested. So, when I read the description, not only did hiking happen, but so did a mystery disappearance of a childhood friend, I was HOOKED.

Overall, I absolutely devoured this book and read it in any/all the free time I had. I was left constantly wanting to know what happened next. I would give this book a 3/3.5. I found the ending predictable but thought it concluded very nicely.

The themes of this book are what made the book for me.
Emlyn has a past she'd rather keep there. Now living a simple life in her airstream in rural Idaho, her closest friends are a handsome park ranger and elderly woman who acts as an innkeeper and town reverend. She works as a flyfishing tour guide and keeps isolated as much as possible. But one day, Tyler, the love of her life (or is he?) who broke her heart and quite literally abandoned her in the wilderness reappears to request her help in finding their friend, Janessa, a friend Emlyn only recently slowly integrating back into her life.
The intrigue comes in with what happened between Emlyn and Tyler, with Emlyn and Janessa? And where is Janessa? Is she hurt, in danger, really missing at all? We learn of the past Emlyn was escaping through flashbacks. These flashback scenes at first interrupted the flow of the story for me and slowed the pacing. However, they did add the emotional attachment to understand conflicting emotions and also put together the elements ultimately lead to the climax of the plot. Janessa and their friendship, how she and Tyler were as a couple, Emlyn's childhood. I also had a hard time trying to like the two girls until nearly the end though. Janessa was fierce, but demanding, and I wasn't always sure she could be trusted or if she had ulterior motives. Emlyn, who we find out has abandonment issues from childhood, latches on to her a little too tightly. Same with Tyler, who I adored but was weary of as well. He just seemed too good to be true, so of course we want to know how that relationship ended so traumatically. So overall the characters weren't what connected me to this story but the themes of friendship, love, and forgiveness.
I really loved the rural setting and nature as well as survival descriptions. This was my first book by this author and I intend to read more of them for those reasons. This book did tug at my heartstrings and made me angry and sad but happy as well so well done to the author for creating emotional connection through these topics, though I overall was not surprised by the plot twists. I think the lead-up and the flashback memories built the puzzle pieces well enough to see the whole picture that Emlyn was missing and needed to see for herself.

This is the first book I've delved into by Kimi Cunningham Grant. It's also my first time scoring an advanced reader's copy, so I'm aiming to dodge any grammar errors I spot. My review? Purely based on Grant's storytelling.

I enjoyed parts of this book, but it didn’t fully feel like a thriller. It started a bit rough and very slow. A lot of thrillers start off strong and hook you right after the first few chapters - this one did not. It took some time to be invested in the main character, Emlyn. I am very much a character based reader. If the character development isn’t there I’m usually out. This was part of my issue. I was never truly invested in Emlyn’s story.

I was getting concerned that I wouldn’t finish, but around half way through the story, for me, it really picked up.

Emlyn’s best friend is in trouble and her ex (lots of backstory here) enlists her help to find her and bring her home. The story itself is a bit predictable, but fun. My favorite part was actually how descriptive Grant was in writing about the wilderness. You could easily picture yourself amongst these characters.

I would recommend based on the second half and would give another Grant book a shot.

Saving her friend, her lover and herself. This story is simple but complex in the timelines described. You will want to keep reading this diary of a young girl who becomes a very strong wilderness survivor and savior.

Enjoy the forest and the trees.

The Nature of Disappearing was a captivating read that had me desperate to see how everything unfolded. Kimi Cunnigham Grant crafted a mesmerizing story through her exceptional writing and vivid description of the wilderness. The Nature of Disappearing is well-paced and through the use of alternating timelines, we see Emlyn's past and present unfold beautifully.

The story follows Emlyn, a 28-year-old wilderness guide who has worked hard to distance herself from her troublesome past. A past that has had her building up walls, and in some ways impedes her people skills concerning her job though she excels at all other aspects. Emlyn has found a tentative peace, despite her past, that is quickly disrupted when she sees an old friend has gone missing and her ex-boyfriend shows up desperate for her help in tracking her down. I felt drawn to Emlyn's character and really liked how she chose words to describe people's "essence". These little tidbits of information, mirrored with how she viewed herself had me longing to understand her. The whole cast of characters was intriguing and I felt that the story unfolded beautifully. I cannot wait to read more by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy, all opinions expressed are my own. Check out The Nature of Disappearing when it releases June 18, 2024.

Emlyn is a 28 year old adventure guide, working for a river outfitter in a national forest and living out of her airstream trailer. She is great at the technical part of her job but has difficulty with her people skills. She is alarmed when she sees on TV that an old friend has gone missing while camping, and reluctantly meets an old boyfriend to help find out what happened to her. Thus begins our mystery with the reader gradually learning what happened between the three friends with chapters alternating between current and past timelines.

I found the story compelling and I had no trouble following the alternating timelines although I felt that some suspension of reality was required to stay immersed in the story. Never the less I thought it was a worthwhile read and an interesting story with a great sense of place.

Thanks to net galley and the publisher for this e galley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant so much. This book also did NOT disappoint. Kimi Cunningham Grant is an amazing author! Get ready for a wild, wilderness adventure. Friendship. Relationships. Secrets. Dishonesty. Fear. Lies. Suspense. Deception. This book has it all. I highly recommend this. It comes out this summer and would be the perfect summer non-romcom read to suck you in from the beginning.

Thank you NetGalley and Minotaur Books for an early copy of this book.

Wilderness. That was the original title of this story and it’s very fitting.

First, I loved the nature aspect of this book, the descriptions and the setting. The cinematography of a movie adaption of this book would be breathtaking.

I also really enjoyed the story itself. It had a twist and wrapped up nicely at the end. In the first 2/3 of the book, the main character, Emlyn, is searching for her old best friend, Janessa, who has disappeared off the grid and Emyln fears something may have happened to her.

Emlyn sets off with her ex boyfriend, Tyler, who has also expressed concern, as Janessa is one of his oldest friends, to search for Janessa and her partner.

The story alternates between the past, filling the reader in on the history between Janessa, Tyler, and Emlyn, and the present, Emlyn and Tyler on their search for their missing friend.

The final chapters of the book keep you guessing on who the “bad guy” might be, how the characters will escape the middle of the woods, and if Emlyn will find peace.

Overall, an enjoyable read that felt a little slow at parts but kept me going to find out what happened to Janessa.

Wow. I loved everything about this book. The stellar writing, all of the relatable characters--both well-meaning or deceptive, the deep understanding the author has of nature in the wilderness and the nature of human frailties. I loved the multi-layered plotting, the emotion, the pacing…every single element. The Nature of Disappearing is one of those books that can make us feel deeply and recognize relationships we've had in our own lives that didn't turn out as we hoped but led us to something better. Stronger. Healthier. The Nature of Disappearing is not a story to race through, but a novel to savor. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St Martins Press for providing an advance copy of this book to read and review. This review will post to Bayside Book Reviews at https://baysidebookreviews.com and its Instagram page on release day. Follow us! *NetGalley Top Reviewer*

3.5⭐ I'm not sure how I feel about this story... Emlyn has left her painful past behind and is starting fresh as a mountain guide in Idaho. However, her tentative peace is disrupted when her ex-boyfriend Tyler visits her, asking for help in finding their friend Janessa.

Janessa has become a social media influencer by sharing her vanlife adventures with her rugged survivalist boyfriend. One day, Tyler arrives with some alarming news – Janessa is missing. She hasn't posted anything lately and when she does, it's from a completely different location than where her caption claims to be. Emlyn and Janessa barely speak and Tyler, the man Emlyn considered to be the love of her life, left her freezing and half-dead in the woods three years ago. However, Janessa's safety is crucial now and she must move on from the past ... So, they pack up and head for the last place where Janessa was supposed to be.

If you're a nature lover, you'll appreciate this book that vividly describes the woods, its surroundings, and survival elements. However, I didn't feel connected to the characters or the storyline. It failed to be a thriller or even a suspenseful story. The plot revolves around friendship and how many times one must hit a wall to realize one needs to change direction. At times, I felt sorry for Emilyn I think she deserves better even from Janessa. The story lacks twists and turns, nothing happens until the very end. Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly well-written and makes for an engaging read that one can breeze through.

Thank You NetGalley and Publisher for the eARC.