Today it is my pleasure to kick off the blog tour for The River by Peter Heller. I read the blurb for this book and really wanted to read it, and then I saw the amazing cover and knew that I had to read it. So thank you to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to be part of the blog tour. I received a copy of The River by Peter Heller from the publisher via Netgalley, I was under no obligation to review the book and all thoughts are my own.
My Review:
First I have to say how much I love the cover for the UK version of this book, it’s stunning and really drew me to wanting to read this book.
I love books like this, a fight for survival when you’re in the middle of nowhere with nobody other than yourself and your travel companions to get you out of there. And I love books set in the wilderness where I’m taken to a whole other world that I will likely never go to myself. So this book was already winning in my eyes.
Wynn and Jack are best friends who love spending time in the outdoors together, they have done so many times over the years they have been friends and so they know each other so well they barely need to speak as they navigate a dangerous river.
They had expected the rapids to be the risky part of their trip, but they were wrong and it quickly becomes clear that this trip will be one where they will have to fight to survive.
One thing that struck me as I read The River was how it read differently to many books, I kept thinking that I was reading a book written many years ago and then Wynn and Jack would suddenly talk about satellite phones and I was reminded that this book is set in the present and not the past.
The writing is very descriptive, I really felt as though I could see the river, hear the birds and smell the smoke as I read. The pace is slow at first and then suddenly, BAM, you’re sucked in and desperately reading to find out what was going to happen. The chapters are very long but I quite liked that and found that it fitted well with the story.
There were many things to like about The River by Peter Heller, it was a different read but one that felt so real and made so much sense. The author clearly has a vast amount of knowledge about rivers, camping and surviving in the wild and this enhances the readers experience when reading the book.
I really enjoyed this book and will definitely read more from the author.
Blurb:
TWO FRIENDS
Wynn and Jack have been best friends since their first day of college, brought together by their shared love of books and the great outdoors.
THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME
When they decide to take time off university and canoe down the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate the ultimate wilderness experience.
No phones. No fellow travellers. No going back.
A HELLISH RIDE
But as a raging wildfire starts to make its way towards them, their expedition becomes a desperate race for survival. And when a man suddenly appears, claiming his wife has vanished, the fight against nature’s destructive power becomes a much deadlier game of cat and mouse.
THE RIVER by bestselling author Peter Heller is a gripping thriller about the beauty of the great outdoors and the dangers of the wild with a page-turning story that builds up to a shocking finale and keeps the reader guessing until the very end.
About The Author:
Peter Heller is an award-winning adventure writer and the author of four bestselling novels, including the New York Times bestseller THE DOG STARS, a Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle andAtlantic Book of the Year. Born and raised in New York, he attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he became an outdoorsman and white-water kayaker. He has travelled the world as an expedition kayaker, writing about challenging descents in the Pamirs, the Tien Shan mountains, the Caucuses, Central America and Peru. A keen adventurer, he has navigated some of the most dangerous rivers in the world, including the Muk Su River in the High Pamirs of Tadjikistan. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry, and won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem ‘The Psalms of Malvine’.
The River by Peter Heller is out now and is available from Amazon UK.
If only I could read faster 