Maggie

really well-written legal and family drama; the tone is similar to Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow so if you liked that one, you will like this.

The last in the Aaron Falk trilogy that began with Jane Harper's explosively successful debut The Dry, Exiles will please her fans and hopefully win her new ones. As before, she deftly paints an evocative Australian landscape, this time setting the story in the southern Australian wine country and brings back some secondary characters from previous books to populate the narrative. There are actual two mysteries going on, a hit-and-run accident five years before that remains unsolved and the year-old disappearance of a young mother attending the local fair who seemingly took her own life by jumping into a nearby reservoir. Falk is there not in his official police officer capacity but as a friend of the family attended a baby's christening and he gets caught up in unraveling the circumstances surrounding the deaths. As with Harper's earlier books, this one is a slow burn. Facts are revealed in a subtle way rather than with hairpin twists and outlandish turns. Instead, it's family dynamics, quiet observations, and long-buried secrets that hold the key to the reveals.
And for fans of Aaron Falk, he not only has a mystery to investigate but a burgeoning romance which causes him to think long and hard about the direction he wants his life to go. If you're a fan of multi-layered mysteries with subtle plots, psychologically-sound character development, and moral dilemmas, Jane Harper is an author that belongs on your shelves and Exiles is a perfect place to start.

My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

What an exquisite gem of a book. Throw the “writer rules” out the window - in the hands of a master like Cunningham it doesn't matter if you head-hop, if your pace is slow and wandering, if your characters are not always totally relatable or sympathetic because you're caught in the writer's spell - willing to go where he takes you, knowing you'll be richer for it when you come out the other side. I loved the family, the willingness to incorporate the pandemic into the narrative, the different age groups and family dynamics. I was sad to leave this world when the book was done.

My thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of the book for review.

I think my definition of friendship and Schwalbe's definition are quite different.

4.5 rounded up. A few blips toward the end when things got confusing but all in all, a great suspense novel and the kickoff to a wonderful career.