Like her first novel, this book wouldn't let me go. I just had to keep reading. The characters are so real and believable, and the story line the same. I look forward to reading the next one.

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She does a good job continuing developing the character of Aaron Falk. The story was interesting and you wanted to see what was going to happen next. A good series - I would recommend.

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Loved the back and forth, kept my interest!

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A good and fast read but not as good as Ms. Harper's first, The Dry.

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Very interesting.

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I read Harper's THE DRY a few months ago and thought it was a really great thriller. This is her follow-up to that novel and it again features Aaron Falk, a Federal police agent who specializes in financial crimes in Australia. In this one, a group of five women go on a required corporate retreat in the wilderness of Australia's outback. The retreat is part of a team-building exercise run by a corporation owned by the Bailey family. Early one morning, Falk receives a very short cell phone call from Alice Russell who is part of the wilderness retreat and is also Falk's whistleblower for his investigation into money laundering by the Baileys. It turns out that Alice has gone missing after the women's group gets lost during their retreat. The other four women make it back to safety after they assumed that Alice walked out on her own. So what happened to Alice? Harper throws in a lot of different possibilities and false leads. The wilderness area they were in was also the site of some serial killings several years earlier and the son of the killer may still be in the area. Or could Alice have been killed by someone in the corporation who knew about her working as a whistleblower for Falk? There is also a lot of animosity among the group of women and nobody seemed to like Alice who was somewhat of a bully.

I enjoyed this novel but not quite as much as THE DRY. It seemed like the focus of FORCE OF NATURE was more on the group of women and problems in their families rather than on Falk. Falk just seemed to be along for the ride and didn't really play much of a role in determining the fate of Alice. I will, however, probably be reading more of Harper's novels in the future.

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Second in a series. There are references to THE DRY, and while I read it a couple years ago I don't remember the characters. Didn't seem to affect the story though. I liked the alternating chapters, one timeline focusing on Falk and Cooper investigating the disappearance, and the other spotlighting the women's journey. Good sense of place, good dialogue, the author gives us plenty of suspects at first and a couple red herrings. At first I was incredulous that the adventure company could be that incompetent, but hey, it could happen. While it's nicely creepy in places, and I did enjoy the mystery, I thought Harper was very stereotypical with her gender roles. Men are referred to by their entire name "Daniel Bailey", or by last name "Bailey", but the women are referred to by first names. Jill Bailey can't see a map because she won't admit she needs glasses, c'mon, who does that. Harper does a great job driving the characters (and me the reader) nuts with the cell phone plotline. In the end, only Falk and Cooper are likeable, and I felt the rest deserved to stay lost, although I did feel bad about the two daughters.

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