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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2019
You don’t have to read The Dry to enjoy Forces Of Nature, but it would help. Similar to officer Aaron Falk’s introductory novel, Forces of Nature is an atmospheric thriller with a complex plot and strong characters. Yes there are some callbacks to The Dry, but they are almost entirely unimportant to the plot here. I enjoyed the premise of this book very much and it was perfectly used to provide a number of suspects in the disappearance of poor Alice, a character few will feel sorry for. I can usually figure out who did it about halfway through most mysteries, but both of Ms Harper’s novels that I’ve read kept me guessing until the end.
****Spoilers from here*****
Unfortunately, this book fails where The Dry succeeded mightily. The reveal felt very unsatisfactory to me. After all the hardships these character go through, Alice deserved a better end than she received. Maybe that was the intention. Like No Country for Old Men, there is tension built and then poor Josh Brolin is just dead, killed off-screen.
All of the characters were developed nicely except for Carmen. She’s young and is about to be married to a man who is admittedly not like Aaron. There is some manufactured sexual tension that I thought was a little synthetic, and the payoff under the falls seemed a bit rushed. Other than that, I have no real idea who she is.
I liked this book very much. The Dry was such an excellent read, Ms Harper had a tough job for the next one. She succeeded, but in the end, Forces of Nature fell just a little flat. I am very much looking forward to the next one though. I highly recommend this series, especially The Dry.
****Spoilers from here*****
Unfortunately, this book fails where The Dry succeeded mightily. The reveal felt very unsatisfactory to me. After all the hardships these character go through, Alice deserved a better end than she received. Maybe that was the intention. Like No Country for Old Men, there is tension built and then poor Josh Brolin is just dead, killed off-screen.
All of the characters were developed nicely except for Carmen. She’s young and is about to be married to a man who is admittedly not like Aaron. There is some manufactured sexual tension that I thought was a little synthetic, and the payoff under the falls seemed a bit rushed. Other than that, I have no real idea who she is.
I liked this book very much. The Dry was such an excellent read, Ms Harper had a tough job for the next one. She succeeded, but in the end, Forces of Nature fell just a little flat. I am very much looking forward to the next one though. I highly recommend this series, especially The Dry.
