Edge of the seat. Eight people go searching for a man who went missing on a pre-wedding trip with his four buddies. Disaster after disaster happens. Will they all make it back alive? Were the original four lads telling the truth about what happened five years ago? Missing person searcher, Frankie seems the most ill-equipped of the eight in the unforgiving terrain but she employs logic and calmness. A gripping novel which certainly held my interest to the very end.

Frankie Elkin is back and I for one couldn’t be more excited!

Set deep inside a national forest, this book is a tense, thrilling and claustrophobic, psychological thriller. As an experienced hiker, Gardner has used her knowledge and skills to craft this story in such a way that the forest (never mind what’s in it) becomes a physical threat at every turn. The emotions and struggle of the search crew as they hike through the terrain is brutally real and descriptions of their surroundings, challenges they face and the extreme weather makes it no game or adventure for the weak - this is serious.

Frankie, unusually, felt less developed in this book. Whilst there is reference to her previous escapade and lover. She doesn’t feel like she’s become any stronger, in fact it felt like this search was going to be her swan song and that she’d finally had enough. The first chapter is written completely differently to the rest and I didn’t like it’s style. It was almost like a rhyme with its repeated phrases. And the way in which the paragraphs were written made it jumpy and hard to follow. Luckily, once out of the prologue Frankie’s narration is much smoother and more focused.

I absolutely love Frankie’s character. She’s totally unique and almost entirely skill-less (with the exception of her squirrel brain) but she’s thorough and relentless. She asks the questions people don’t think to ask or are too afraid to hear the answers of. She’s broken and searching for redemption or some sign that it’s okay to stop now, that she’s done her time. She enjoys what she does but she’s travel weary and not at her peak when this particular adventure begins.

It’s hard to compare this book with the previous. Overall I think I prefer the first as Frankie felt more empowered and had a real drive to her. Whereas in this novel she is totally out of her depth.

But this book is simply incredible and in a whole league of its own. As a psychological thriller, Gardner has crafted a fine story. It’s haunting and totally immersive, I felt like I was there with Frankie. And whilst I have to plans to go hiking myself I feel like I’m under equipped for life and that I need some fancy tools around my wrist and waist!

Thanks to NetGalley for my advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner
I give this book 4.5 stars

A young man disappears during a stag weekend in the woods. Years later his family & friends are still searching for him.
They hike deep into the wilderness,with them is missing person specialist Frankie Elkin.
What they don't know is that they are putting their own lives in terrifying danger, and may not come back alive . . .

This is book 2 but can be read as a standalone.
Frankie is a character l have taken to my heart,she is a recovering alcoholic and has suffered a lot in her past,she lives out of a suitcase and is complex,flawed,determined and strong.
The author does a great job of creating a tense,scary and dangerous atmosphere out in the wilds, lt was so lifelike l felt like l was hiking along with them.Combine this with a varied and interesting group of characters who end up fighting for survival and you have a breathtaking read full of suspicion and twists.Who is sabotaging the mission,……..who is hiding secrets?
(I won’t be going hiking/camping anytime in the future after reading this)
With thanks to Netgalley,Lisa Gardner and Random House UK, Cornerstone, Century for my chance to read and review this book

I felt this was a very different book from Lisa Gardner. It was a bit of a slow burner for me but once I got into it I was right there in the woods with them all. Chilling and gripping at the same time. Glad to see another Frankie Elkin novel.

I was so thrilled to be granted the ARC of this book I had read and loved the first in the series and I think this latest book was even better than the first!
So we are back with the wonderful Frankie Elkin and she is fast becoming one of my favourite characters to read about she is so flawed in many ways but you really can’t help but love her and her determination to find missing people.
This latest read was so gripping, creepy and atmospheric set in an unforgiving wilderness the pace of the story just never lets up and as it progresses it gets more and more immersive with an ending that I never saw coming.
Lisa Gardner has a fantastic ability to create brilliant characters and to draw you into a plot and she really has excelled herself with this one I absolutely loved it and really look forward to the next the next of the series.
So highly recommended and many thanks to the author for a gripping read.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone, Century for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

A highly enjoyable thriller.

It's perhaps a touch too long, especially in the closing parts, and more than a little unrealistic during the final quarter. But the characterisation is great, the writing is sturdy, it has very believable emotion and touches of humour that really work. I also loved the setting and the amount of work that must have gone into the research - I feel like I learned something and also like I want to possess a lot of the camping/survival gear that is so lovingly described!

This is one where I'm happy to discover that the author has an extensive back catalogue.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC.

A young man known to his friends as ‘saint’ Tim goes missing in the Wyoming outback when on a stag trip with four friends. Years later, his father is still pressing the friends to go back with him to search for his son’s bones. They are reluctant for all kinds of reasons but give in and go each year. Frankie, the teller of this story, is a disturbed searcher for missing persons. On this year’s search they have other helpers and the whole thing goes wrong, adding to the body count. This book has impressive detail about the woods of Wyoming but sometimes it is too much. The story of what goes wrong in their search is well told and has an unexpected ending.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was an ok book.

Things I didn’t enjoy so much -

- I found the premise a little unbelievable with the dad and friends returning year on year for the search
- how Frankie came to be involved or even allowed to be involved given the scale of the search and her lack of experience
- it was overly descriptive and repetitive at times
- the big ‘reveal’ at the end was a disappointment for me

Things I did enjoy -

- you got a real sense of each character and their back story
- the book kept me guessing as to who the bad guy was
- it was easy enough to read

Could really picture the craggy rocks the small crevices the sense of dread as you are being stalked and have a target on your back
Pleased this author has done a stand alone novel again as loved her early work and enjoyed this thriller

I love Lisa Gardner’s books and One Step Too Far is no exception. Her writing is flawless and her characters are so relatable. Frankie Elkin, a recovering alcoholic and missing person’s locator, narrates the story.

The opening is beautifully written, vivid descriptions put you in the middle of the great Wyoming wilderness where Frankie joins an expedition run by the father of a young man who disappeared on his pre-wedding trip five years ago. The tension accelerates the deeper they travel, arriving at Devil’s Canyon. It is generally thought that Tim may have got disoriented and wandered to where there a lake promised a better survival and caves in which to camp out.

I really enjoyed learning about cadaver dogs and how they can scent human bones from animal bones, and how survivalists can survive for a while in such hardy terrain.

The story quickly becomes sinister (my favourite part) as the hike becomes more challenging. Frankie awakes in the night to a male scream. Scott swears he sees the missing man, but was he merely sleepwalking- something he is on the habit of doing. Food sacks, tied to trees, have been decimated. There’s something out there bigger than they anticipated, something that doesn’t leave tracks. At this point, the book sped up for me and I was tearing through the story, desperate to know if Scott had really seen what he’d thought he’d seen, or simply an apparition.

The plot in itself is complex, with bags of backstory to whet a reader’s appetite. I never saw the ending coming. Which means I read the novel at a fast clip, missing any clues or teasers along the way. The scene at the hospital surprised me. It was unusual considering the sheriff was present. But I understand the reason for it — no pain, no gain — but wondered if it were necessary given what the villain was about to endure anyway.

All in all, a very enjoyable read and one I would recommend to other Lisa Gardner fans.

Many thanks to publisher @DuttonBooks, @centurybooksuk, #Netgalley and author @LisaGardnerBks #OneStepTooFar for the privilege of reading this book.

I enjoyed a lot about One Step Too Far, but in places it strained credibility just a little too far itself.

The story is narrated by Frankie Elkin, rather a rootless, lost soul and recovering alcoholic, who travels around trying to locate people who have been missing for a long time. She appears to be doing this to escape from her own demons, although she repeatedly asks herself “Why do I do this?” without managing an answer. For her trouble she gets paid nothing, it seems, so she’s poorly equipped to join an expedition to try to find Tim, a young man who disappeared five years ago on his pre-wedding trip with his friends into the Wyoming wilderness. Tim’s father has organised these trips annually and the group of friends, riven with guilt, join in along with two more experienced wilderness explorers plus a cadaver dog and her handler.

The beginning is very well done, even if the group’s acceptance of Frankie is pretty unlikely. The preparations and development of a serious hike into the wilderness are interesting and absorbing, and the dynamics in the group are interesting and very plausibly developed. As things – inevitably – turn more sinister, plausibility begins to recede somewhat, but for some time it’s well within the bounds of suspension of disbelief. I have to say, though, that it did become pretty silly toward the end. Lisa Gardner’s writing is very good, so the tension and exhaustion of being stranded in the wilderness while apparently being hunted is very well portrayed, but some of the events themselves strained my credulity well beyond its elastic limit. The Big Reveal was also, shall we say, unlikely in the extreme, both in the revelation itself and the manner in which it happens, so the later parts of the book took some of the shine off the very good opening for me.

Overall, this remains a four-star book because Gardner’s characterisation, sense of place and so on are good enough to compensate for much (but not all) of the later plot implausibilities. Certainly a decent holiday read, and with enough here to encourage me to try the next in the series.

(My thanks to Random House for an ARC vis NetGalley.)

Frankie Elkin is a nomadic, 10 year sober alcoholic and is driven to help find missing people. For free. Not just any missing people, but those that have been forgotten by nearly everyone, but particularly the authorities, who have neither the manpower or budget to keep searching years down the line. On a whim and a newspaper article she ends up in Wyoming, needing to help find a young man, missing for 5 years. But this time it’s like no search she’s ever done.

This is a wilderness survival psychological thriller that had me reading late into the night to finish it. The writing, as always with this author, is excellent, twisted and twisting plot lines, so scary at times I wanted to stop to draw breath but had to keep going. Frankie is such a brilliant character, flawed, broken, human and persistent. This book shows how people can come together in life or death situations, and that essentially they will do whatever they need to help someone in trouble, This is one of the best books I have read so far this year. A must read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Frankie Elkin travels around and searches for missing people without pay. She learns of a Tim, a guy who went missing during his bachelor party in Wyoming, which consisted of hiking, camping, and a lot of drinking. Now 5 years later, Tim's father Martin, 4 friends who were there when Tim disappeared, and 3 guides with a dog embark on a mission to find Tim's remains. When one of the friends are unable to go, Frankie steps in and joins the search, but soon they realize things aren't right and someone doesn't want them in that wilderness.

I love Lisa Gardner; she is one of my top 5 authors. If written by anyone else, I surely would have hated this book. I cannot stand wilderness survival novels and that is partially what this was. But, since it was written by Lisa Gardner, it was good. It was not great, like most of her novels are. There was plenty of suspicion and wondering who was doing what, and I like the Frankie character after 2 novels featuring her. I look forward to Frankie's next case, which I assume will be in a setting that I appreciate more.

One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner

A young man disappears during a stag weekend in the woods. Years later, he's still missing.
But his friends who were with him that day are still searching for him. Still hunting.
They hike deep into the wilderness.
With them is missing person specialist Frankie Elkin.
What they don't know is that they are putting their own lives in terrifying danger, and may not come back alive...
Yet another brilliant book by this author . I think she is incapable of writing a bad novel.
All her books keep you gripped from the very beginning , and this one is the same. Tense , twisty , great characters and a 100% satisfying climax to the end.
Read it.

My first book from this author and it certainly won’t be my last! I was interested from the very first page. I think I will get into reading her backlist titles