‘The Hiking Trip’ by Jenny Blackhurst

Author : Jenny Blackhurst
Title : The Hiking Trip
Pages : 300
Publisher: Canelo
Publication date : January 12, 2023
Source : Netgalley

| ABOUT THE BOOK |

The trip of a lifetime ends in murder

Maisie leaves her precarious home life in the UK to hike the West Coast Trail in Canada. She meets brother and sister Sera and Ric, and what begins as a fun-filled experience in a beautiful secluded setting quickly turns sour.

Twenty-five years later, a woman named Laura is panicked to learn that a body was found near the trail and the police suspect they’re the bones of Sera. The secret she’s been hiding for a quarter of a century is about to come out – and someone is determined to make sure she tells the truth, and pays the price, as she should have done back then. But what lengths will Laura go to in order to protect her carefully constructed family life?

| MY THOUGHTS |

Laura seems to have it all. A wonderful husband, two adorable children, a delightful dog and a lovely house. But Laura isn’t all she appears to be. Her life is mostly built on lies and secrets, and the past might just come back to haunt her when one of those secrets looks set to be revealed.

Human bones have been discovered on a hiking trail in Canada. They are believed to belong to a young woman called Sera, who disappeared on the trail twenty-five years ago. Laura knows all about it. After all, she was on that hiking trip all those years ago. Someone is desperate for her to tell the truth, as she should have done back then. To what lengths will Laura go to keep her family and carefully constructed life safe?

‘The Hiking Trip‘ hooked me from the very first page. The chapters alternate between events on the fated hiking trip twenty-five years ago, and the present day where odd things start to happen in Laura’s life. On the hiking trip, the reader first meets a young woman called Maisie. She has come all the way from the UK to hike the West Coast Trail in Canada. Here she meets Sera and Ric, and what was supposed to be an adventure and a fun-filled experience quickly turns into an absolute nightmare.

I must say it didn’t take me long to figure out how Laura could possibly have been involved, but that didn’t ruin my reading experience at all. There were still plenty of other things left to discover and there is just something about Jenny Blackhurst’s writing that I really like. ‘The Hiking Trip‘ is full of intrigue and mystery as you try to figure out what happened to the characters on that trip. There are a few of them, though some more important than others. And some are utterly and completely toxic. So massively unlikeable that I often rolled my eyes at Maisie, not understanding how she couldn’t see what I was seeing.

Obviously this is fiction. However, for some reason, my brain still prefers it when things actually make sense. I’m not entirely sure they did here. I have questions that remain unanswered, actions by characters that baffled me for which I would have liked more of an explanation. Mostly though, I feel a sense of injustice. Like maybe someone got away with something, and it just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not the author so clearly I don’t know if that was intentional or even if that’s the way I’m supposed to be feeling. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? All this is a roundabout way of saying that I love it when a book makes me think. Even if it means going around in circles for a few days.

With ‘The Hiking Trip‘, Jenny Blackhurst delivers another solid and entertaining psychological thriller. Just like I’ve come to expect from her. The story is massively addictive, makes you question everyone and everything, and will have you glued to the pages. I very much enjoyed it and I look forward to whatever she comes up with next.

Amazon UK

My thanks to the publisher for the advanced review copy, which I received via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.