Review: The Survivors by Jane Harper (audio)

Title: The Survivors

Author: Jane Harper

Narrator: Stephen Shanahan

Published: February 2021, Macmillan Audio

Length: 11 hours 57 minutes

Source: Netgalley

Summary:
Coming home dredges up deeply buried secrets…

Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences.

The
guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young
family to the small coastal community he once called home.

Kieran’s parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.

When
a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to
emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never
washed away…

My thoughts:  This is the second book I’ve read by Jane Harper and I absolutely love her writing style. I read the first book in her Aaron Falk series, which I really enjoyed, and need to get back to that one, but luckily this latest one is a stand-alone and it really was very good.

I love how atmospheric Jane Harper’s books are. She really is able to use the setting in her stories to the fullest extent, almost as if they become a character themselves. This particular book was quite a complex mystery and I appreciated that. I love that we have two murders that need solving – one that happens in the present day, and one that happened in the past and was never really resolved. The way the story moves back and forth in time, dredging up secrets long buried, really kept me engaged and guessing as to where things were heading. 

As much as this is a thriller, it’s also a great character study into the people we meet. It’s dark and gloomy at times, but slowly we come to find out what happened all those years ago, along with what has been happening now in this area. Like a jigsaw puzzle, there are many parts to this story and ever so slowly we are given the pieces, though not without a few shake-ups along the way.

I definitely enjoyed this one and am now quite eager to go back to Jane’s earlier books because I am once again reminded of just how much I enjoy her writing. If you enjoy a complex mystery, I highly recommend this one!

Audio thoughts: This was a great audio and I thought Stephen Shanahan did such a great job bringing it to life. His pacing and intonation were spot on, and he had an accent which worked well for the book but wasn’t too over-done so as to not be able to understand him.