I purchased this book for my own personal collection. I borrowed the audiobook from the library.
Publisher: William Morrow / Harper Audio
Published: November 15, 2022
Summary:
Building upon the highly acclaimed debut of Alice Henderson’s A Solitude of Wolverines and its follow-up thriller A Blizzard of Polar Bears comes the eagerly anticipated and electrifying third installment A Ghost of Caribou, in which wildlife biologist Alex Carter encounters an unsolved murder and a town in turmoil while in search of this majestic, all-but-vanished animal.
When a remote camera on a large, rugged expanse held by the Land Trust for Wildlife Conservation picks up a blurry image of what could be a mountain caribou, they contact Alex Carter to investigate. After all, mountain caribou went extinct in the contiguous U.S. years ago, and if one has wandered down from Canada, it’s monumental.
But when Alex arrives on scene in the Selkirk mountains of northeastern Washington state, she quickly learns that her only challenge isn’t finding an elusive caribou on a massive piece of land. The nearby townspeople are agitated; loggers and activists clash over a swath of old growth forest marked for clearcutting. The murdered body of a forest ranger is found strung up in the town’s park, and Alex learns of a backcountry hiker who went missing in the same area the year before.
As she ventures into the forest in search of the endangered animal, she quickly finds herself in a fight for her life, caught between factions warring for the future of the forest and a murderer stalking the dense groves of ancient trees.
My thoughts:
This is the third book in the Alex Carter series and it just might be one of my new favorite series. Who would have thought that a conservationist/thriller mix would be my type of read and yet I cannot get enough of this type of book!
While this book does stand on its own, I would highly recommend reading the series in order. Not only are the books all fascinating in their own right, but there is a thread that is carried through that just makes more sense if you read the books in order. But this is up to you, of course!
I will say of the three books so far, this is my least favorite. I think the overall story line was just not as exciting to me as the previous two were, but it was still engaging and I of course loved learning about the caribou – I think this is probably my favorite part of this series. The way the author is able to blend in her research about these animals into her story in such an effortless and seamless way. It makes me want to learn more about these animals after reading these books and I love that!
I will continue reading this series and am eager to get my hands on the next book – I hear it’s about jaguars, which I know very little about. I do hope this series goes on for quite a while – there are so many animals I would like to see her feature!
Audio thoughts:
Once again, Eva Kaminsky narrates this one, which I was happy to see. There is nothing I love more than consistency of narrators when it comes to series. And Eva does such a great job with bringing this book to life and with the voices, giving the characters their own personalities and infusing just the right amount of tension and emotion into her voice as needed!
Books in this series:
- A Solitude of Wolverines
- A Blizzard of Polar Bears
- A Ghost of Caribou
- A Prowl of Jaguars – due out 2024
