What a gripping read Exiles is. I have read Jane Harper before but not an Aaron Falk one, not that it made the slightest difference.

Jane Harperis excellent at writing about small town Australia. Aaron Falk has been asked to be godfather to his friend Rico’s sons christening and gets involved in a missing persons case from the previous year. With a lot of twists and turns and a few red herrings as I w as reading I got the awful sense of impending doom. A very cleverly crafted read that just makes me want read more of her books

This is a slow burner of a read.
Infact something like 300 pages pass before we really get to the nub of the plot.
However the story starts taut and thrilling when a baby is found abandoned at a festival but Zoe Gillespie's parents cannot be found. Even when her mother, Kim's shoe is found there is no trace of her.
Years pass and Aaron Falk returns to Marralee Vally on holiday where the incident took place.
The location is brilliantly as always described by Harper. Small town Australia - its beauty and its vast emptiness (often reflected in lives of locals) is always written well. There are moments of humour - and sometimes we need them! Falk's friends - the Racos and their family draw him into a wider circle of life that he himself perhaps neglect to develop back in Melbourne. Overall he still seems sad to me.
I am not a fan of Australia as a holiday destination despite its obvious beaches and sunshine. But here in this landscape it is dry bleak and despairing. That adds well to the local inhabitants for whom Falk returns almost instinctively as if drawn by a long thread.
This it says will be the last Falk book by Harper but she is too good a writer not to have others up her sleeve.
Maybe as fans we might though like a little speeding up of the plot!

A new Jane Harper book is always cause for celebration, and when Falk comes back onto the scene, even more so! Falk goes to visit old friends to celebrate the birth of their new baby but his visit is overshadowed by the tragic news that a mother who went missing a year before, abandoning her baby at a town fair, has still not been found, and there are no clues as to her whereabouts. The town fair is back again and her family decide to launch another appeal for information as to her whereabouts. More smalltown secrets are uncovered, with long standing grudges and misunderstandings coming to the fore once Falk starts investigating

Jane Harper is so skilled at evoking smalltown Australia - its a world away from my life but I could feel the heat and dust as I was reading. I was gripped to the story and will definitely look out for Falk's next adventure.

Exiles is Jane Harper’s first novel to feature Aaron Falk since her acclaimed debut, The Dry. Aaron is visiting Raco (also from The Dry) and his family in Marralee County for the christening of his godson. The event has been delayed for a year after the mysterious disappearance of one of their old friends the year before. Aaron is drawn into the intrigue and starts his own investigation.
The joy of a Jane Harper novel Is that she takes the time to allow the plot to build slowly so you really get to know the characters and understand their relationships to each other. She steadily increases the pace as the reader becomes more aware that something is very wrong under all the local beauty and close small town allegiances. In the last section she cleverly switches pov to the missing woman as the truth becomes apparent in a breaktaking, can’t put it down, final section. Such a clever and thoroughly enjoyable book.

A new book from Jane Harper is always something to be excited about.
In this, her fifth novel, she brings back her Melbourne investigator, Aaron Falk, introduced in her amazing first novel, The Dry.
Aaron is visiting the small town of Marralee for the christening of Greg Raco’s son, Henry.
Greg is the policeman Aaron befriended five years earlier in The Dry, and he and his wife Rita have asked Aaron to be Henry’s godfather.
This is the second time Aaron’s making the trip to Marralee for Henry’s christening – which was meant to have been held the previous year but was cancelled when a family friend, Kim Gillespie, disappeared. She left her six-week-old baby in her pram at the town’s annual food and wine festival, and it’s suspected Kim drowned in the town’s reservoir.
A year later, she still hasn’t been found, and her family is using the festival to appeal to anyone who may have seen her that fateful day. Aaron, of course, is drawn into the investigation.
With wonderful storytelling, Harper crafts much more than a mystery – this is also a charming story about love (there’s romance for Aaron), family, friendship and connections.
Coupled with the author’s wonderful observations of people and places, her words bring the setting of Australia’s wine region to life.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

Having lip-smacked my way through the previous two novels in this trilogy, I’m disappointed to say that Aaron Falk’s swan song didn’t quite titillate my tastebuds to the same degree. Harper’s languorous prose was as captivating as ever, her depiction of small-town Australia rich and immersive, but neither was enough to make up for the stultifying slowness of the plot.

Exiles takes us to Marralee, a fictitious wine-growing valley in Southern Australia, where Falk is visiting to attend his godson’s christening. This coincides with the annual wine festival, but both occasions are shrouded in sadness, as it marks one year since the unexplained disappearance of young mother Kim. Because of his best friend’s family connection to the missing woman, Falk finds himself getting pulled into efforts to revive the investigation.

I’m used to — and appreciate — the slow burn of Harper’s writing, so I was happy to let her descriptions of the setting and the characters slowly draw me into the story. I loved the unfolding sense of place and community; the continuing disquiet surrounding the unsolved mystery. And I thought Harper beautifully explored the anguish of Kim’s teenage daughter Zara, who remains convinced her mother is still alive.

What I struggled with was the lack of purpose and intensity as the book progressed. At times it felt like being on a slow train to nowhere. The introduction of a second mystery — an unsolved hit-and-run from nine years ago — did little to focus the plot.

It’s only in the last quarter of the novel that the pace picks up somewhat and we get answers to all the questions as well as personal redemption for the damaged character of Falk. It was this latter aspect that lifted the book out of the doldrums for me. It left me feeling happy for Falk but still dissatisfied with the book overall.

I thoroughly enjoyed this return to the Aaron Falk series. Its slow-burning, character-driven plot had me engaged beginning to end.

The central mystery surrounding a woman who had been missing for a year was emotionally moving and well-paced. Falk is not one of the over-the-top detective types; his drive to figure out what happened, although not investigating in an official capacity, came across naturally. The cast of characters in the tight-knit community, set in South Australian wine country, were vivid and relatable. It was, however, sometimes difficult to keep track of the different relationships between them all and the events each were involved in - perhaps a side effect of small town life where everyone has a connection to everyone else.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for providing a reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Deftly plotted and very well written, this book manages to combine a sense of slow burn with twists and turns that keep you guessing. The sense of place is powerful, as with all of Harper's work, and it's deeply atmospheric and absorbing.

Exiles is the third and sadly last novel featuring Aaron Falk, a financial investigator with the Australian Federal Police.

In this novel, he’s travelled to Marralle, in South Australian, for the christening of the son of his friend Greg Raco, a police colleague. This is the second time Falk is in Marralee for the christening. A year earlier, it had been delayed following the mysterious disappearance of Kim Gillespie. Kim went to the local food festival with her family, never to be seen again, leaving her 6-week-old daughter unattended.

A year later, there are still no developments in her disappearance and her teenage daughter Zara is convinced that something is not right because her mother would have never left her baby alone. In occasion of the one-year anniversary of the disappearance, Zara makes an appeal during the festival hoping to jog people’s memory and find out what happened to her. Zara is not the only one thinking that something is not right in Kim’s disappearance. Even though Falk had never met Kim in person, he remembers the night of her disappearance and he senses that something is missing.

Exiles is a slow-paced, gripping read and I couldn’t put it down. I have always liked the character of Aaron Falk and in this last book he is quite busy not only trying to solve Kim’s disappearance, but also a six-year-old hit-and-run. The two crimes seem unrelated, but he thinks that there is something going on in the closed community of Marralle where everyone knows each other since they were children. Falk is empathetic and a good listener and everyone seem to want to confide in him. He analyses and rethink his relationship with his father and how his job has completely taken over his life. We also see a romantic side of him that I don’t think we have seen in the previous books. I really enjoyed his relationship with Emma and, like other characters in the book, I rooted for them.

The descriptions of the Australian wilderness are beautiful, vivid, and detailed and the characters are well-developed and intriguing.

I really enjoyed Exiles and I am sorry that this is the last book featuring the character of Aaron Falk, but I liked how everything turned out for him and how the mysteries were resolved. Highly recommended!

I chose to read a free eARC of Exiles but that has in no way influenced my review.

I am the BIGGEST fan of Australian crime fiction. If you’re a regular visitor to the blog then that may not come as much of a surprise to you. I try to prioritise Aussie crime fiction above everything else and read as much as humanly possible, because it’s become a bit of a passion (obsession?!) for me. What started me on my journey, waaaay back in 2017, was picking up a copy of The Dry, the first book in the Aaron Falk series by Jane Harper. From there on in, I was officially hooked. Harper’s latest release is the long awaited third book in the superb Aaron Falk series. I had been so looking forward to meeting up with Falk again that I felt a little apprehensive starting Exiles. But there was no need to worry. Exiles is literary perfection from start to finish and I loved every single moment I spent in the Marralee Valley.

Kim Gillespie tragically disappeared on the opening night of the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival, leaving her young baby, Zoe, alone and unattended in her pram. Now, one year later, and with the shadow of Kim’s disappearance still hanging over the small community, Aaron Falk has arrived in the Valley to join Kim’s friends and family as they welcome a new addition to the family. Falk has finally managed to get a much deserved break from the AFP’s Financial Division but despite being on leave, his interest is piqued by Kim’s story. The more he digs into what happened that day, the more confusing things become. Witness statements are muddled, sightings don’t quite ring true and those closest to Kim aren’t telling the whole truth. It’s down to Falk to peel back the layers of this small community and discover the secrets they’re desperate to keep hidden…

Exiles is an utterly compelling, completely engrossing mystery which delivers on every count. Harper creates the most beautifully drawn, believable characters who are thoroughly engaging and pull the reader into their world. You live each and every moment alongside them and for a fan of character-driven novels (that’s me!), it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing. Add to the superb characterisation the compelling mystery which has you questioning everyone you meet along the way, plus Harper’s incredibly vivid, almost dreamy setting and you have a top notch mystery novel from the Queen of rural Australian crime. It was such a joy to be reunited with Falk again after the previous two books. There’s something so eminently likable about him and I enjoyed seeing him in a much more relaxed environment. This is the third and final book in this trilogy and the author has ended Falk’s journey on the most perfect note. A very satisfying conclusion to a must-read set of books.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. I would definitely recommend Exiles plus the earlier books in the series – The Dry and Force of Nature (not forgetting the two standalone non-Falk novels – The Lost Man and The Survivors, which are also excellent) to all mystery fans. Harper’s writing is exquisite, her characters are a masterpiece and the way she tells a story is captivating from the first word to the last. The mystery unfolds at a gentle pace, tension building throughout the book until you reach the startling conclusion. A highly entertaining, thoroughly immersive read which I devoured with utter glee. Jane Harper remains one of my favourite authors and if you haven’t discovered her books yet then I urge you to change that as soon as you can. Perfection on a page! Highly recommended.

I chose to read and review a free eARC of Exiles. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

I was excited to see there was a new book featuring Aaron Falk as I think he is a great character. Then I learned that this is his final outing and I was reading it but not wanting to finish it for fear it wouldn’t end in a satisfactory way. This book takes us to the South Australian wine country and the main mystery is a woman who has been missing for a year. Falk is there to attend a christening but gets drawn into the investigation. I think this could be read as a standalone but I personally think you need to read The Dry first to appreciate Falk fully. It’s another slow burn from Jane Harper and a fitting farewell (if that’s indeed the case) to Falk and I happily recommend it.

A year after she disappeared, Kim Gillespie's family still keenly feel her absence. Celebrating the christening of the family's youngest addition sees them all joined together again, reminiscing on what happend the year before. Federal investigator Aaron Falk is reluctant to get drawn in to the investigation, but the more time he spends with Kim's family the more he begins to feel that something isn't right.

Jane Harper really does write Australian remote community thrillers perfectly. This time we're deep in South Australian wine country, and the small town vibe really does shine through in the book. The way everyone knows each other, and all have a long shared history - all of this is key to the story, but also really does epitomise what life in these areas is actually like.

In typical Harper style this one doesn't race along at a breakneck pace, it's more focused on building the scene and letting you get to know the people involved and their connections to each other. This is the third book in the Falk collection, and so his story is fairly well known. We also get to revisit the Raco family that we met in book 1, and meet their extended relations. Having some running characters does help with familiarity and make you feel like like you've got a bond with them. Even with the new characters that we haven't met until this book you instantly feel that they are likeable and that you want answers for them.

I thought the story was well written and definitely held my attention. I can't say that I really had any strong feelings as to what may have happened to Kim, but there's definitely a sense that you know things will be resolved, so you're happy to be along for the ride.

A very enjoyable read, and another great book to add to Harper's collection.

I adore Jane Harper's Aaron Falk books. Falk, a financial detective with the Australian police, has a knack of finding himself with crimes to solve in remote small towns. Some of these have been very personal, touching his own past and that of his family, and we have seen him very raw, very exposed, by what has emerged.

Here, in Exiles, he seems to be healing somewhat when he visits the remote community of Marralee Valley for the baptism of his closest friend's child. Even so, he can't escape a mystery his previous visit, a year ago, coincided with the disappearance of a woman who left her baby in his pushchair at a festival. Her family and friends plan using the anniversary to appeal for information, and staying on for a few days, Falk begins to pull and tease at the case.

I simply loved this book. Not only do we get a classic, absolutely cracking crime story here - a sort of locked room mystery in reverse - but we get to spend time with Aaron. Harper's handling of all her themes here - the close knit group of friends and family who seem, even so, to have lost one of their own. The teenage daughter perplexed at her mum's disappearance. A romantic subplot for Falk - perhaps. And lush, beautiful writing about place and environment, not, this time, a desiccated, dying town but a place of greenery and enterprise, the annual Food and Wine Festival bringing much needed visitor dollars and business to the region's vineyards and producers.

It's a story that takes its time, following a gentle pace and establishing everyone's viewpoint - except of course for Kim, the missing mother of two. We hear about her from her circle, how much she is missed, what she was going through and we are given - in recollections from those friends of growing up in the time - a vivid impression of her when younger, too.

This is in so many respects a beautiful book, readable, beguiling, a sensitive and even moving portrait of small town life and of the compromises and losses of going up, of the lengths people will go for love.

It also has some portraits of the darker side of human nature. I won't be specific because that is tightly bound with the secret of what happened a year ago in Marralee. I will say that Exiles also celebrates solidarity, nurturing and gentle, persistent love. Indeed I think this is at the core of the book.

I was also so pleased to see Aaron healing and growing, if you follow these books you will understand what I mean when I say he is a very special man and I just love the development and growth we see in the books.

To summarise: this is a wonderful, outstanding in what was already and outstanding series. I don't know whether Harper is going to let Aaron Falk rest for a bit now, he certainly deserves it though I for one would be delighted to meet him again in a future book.

Probably my favourite of the year so far, don't miss this one.

📖BOOK REVIEW📖
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#Exhiles by @janeharperauthor

⏩for synopsis

I’ve read a few books by this author now and let me tell you she is a subtle genius…

She presents a simple story seemingly about not very much at all, but how wrong you would be; woven in is a delicious and well crafted mystery. She doesn’t put a foot wrong while reeling you in bit by until you have no idea who’s done what or who can be trusted.

The characters were definitely the best part for me; a beautiful group of childhood friends and a shared history are used to tell this story, but can they all be trusted? They were realistic and so relatable my heart was pounding all the way through I didn’t want to hear anything bad about any of them.

Did I get my wish?

Find out tomorrow on release day!

Oh and this is book 3 in the series btw, who knew, but anyway it actually reads perfect as a stand alone!

With thanks to the author, @netgalley and #macmillan for allowing us to read this one early!

-EMILY

@the_book_girls_1

Jane Harper sets a wonderful sense of place bring Southern Australia and it’s vineyards to life. Two deaths several years apart are both unsolved and are closely linked to Harpers detective character Falk. He visits the town to attend a christening and becomes totally emerged in the community and trying to solve the disappearances that have never been solved. He is also at a crossroads in his life and as events unfold he has to employ his ‘ should I go or should I stay ‘ strategy.
A gently unfolding g story that keeps you engrossed

One year ago, Kim disappeared from a busy festival. Leaving behind her baby in a pram, she just vanished into the dark and warm Spring night, and was never seen again. One year on, friends and family are gathering for a christening. Among them, Aaron Falk. Might he be able to solve the mystery surrounding Kim’s disappearance?

Few authors depict small town life as well as Jane Harper does, and it’s exactly that which always gets me excited about her books. These small communities look out for each other. Maybe sometimes they know too much about one another’s business, but they’re also always ready to help someone when necessary. So having a member of that community vanish the way Kim did, impacts all of them. Not knowing what happened or where she is casts a dark shadow over her friends and family. Kim’s teenage daughter refuses to give up the search for answers.

That said, I really felt the mystery element of this story took much of a backseat. ‘Exiles‘ seemed to be more about Aaron, his choices and events in his life that have led him to where he is now. He is not as much on the fringes of the investigation, and I use that term loosely, as he was in the previous book. Aaron is constantly listening, picking up clues along the way, realising that we only see what we expect to see. Still, it often felt as if very little was actually happening. The pace and the lack of action, so to speak, wasn’t right for me at the time.

As the third book in a series, I think this one reads rather well as a stand-alone. It’s most definitely a treat to be able to hang out with Aaron Falk one more time, but on the other hand I wondered about the need for it. In my opinion, neither this book or the second one in the series lived up to ‘The Dry‘, and I truly feel, in the grand scheme of things, ‘Exiles‘ might be the weakest one of the lot. (Please don’t take my word for it as I’m very much in the minority!)

Despite what I just said, I did enjoy ‘Exiles‘ for what it was, although not as much as I’d expected to. I absolute adore Jane Harper’s writing. Her descriptions are so vivid, you almost feel like you’re right there in Australia, seeing the sights, smelling the various scents. I half expected a snake to jump out at some point. The ultimate reveal of what happened to Kim is one I feel I should have figured out myself. I didn’t, but at that point I suppose I’d almost forgotten that’s what the story was about since there seemed to be so very little crime solving happening.

If anything, if ‘Exiles‘ is indeed the end of this series, then it’s a lovely send-off to a beloved character. One who is trying to figure out if maybe there is more to life than work after all. Yet, it does somehow leave the door open for more. Who knows.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

a slow burner of a book

an abandoned baby at the festival
the mom kim vanished into thin air

a year after the disappearance of kim gillespie at the yearly festival there is to be an appeal for any sightings of her

aaron falk is down visiting friends and also to attend the christening of his soon to be godson but as his visit continues so held back truths start to unravel...

3.75 stars. This is the third in the Aaron Falk series - I read the first but not the second - and this one was able to be read relatively easily as a standalone as the author does include some backstory, although it is brief. The writing is very good but the pace of the novel was just too slow for me. This was more of a character-driven story with a romantic relationship and an underlying mystery bubbling along slowly throughout the story. When the plot points started coming together towards the end, it was very good with unexpected twists but it took, for me, too long to get there.

Thanks to Macmillan and Netgalley for this advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.

I loved the first two Aaron Falk books when I read them a few years ago, and I didn't realize that there was going to be another sequel after that. Not that I'm complaining of course, because it's always great to meet up with Aaron Falk again and see whatever case he gets himself tangled up in this time around. And it turned out to be a more than solid thriller, even if it was a bit on the slower side!

It's true that I don't remember much of the previous books anymore, but I do think that Exiles has a different feel about it. Part of the reason is that the setting isn't as harsh and unforgiving as in the first two books; this time around, we visit the Marralee Valley in South Australia. I did love the descriptions of this lush valley, wine country and the festival, but it didn't have that same ominous feel as the first two books and this ment there was less tension and suspense than expected. The case itself also feels less acute... Not that a missing person case isn't intriguing, but we are looking at things well after the fact and I didn't really feel tension there either during most of the ride.

A bonus is that you can easily read Exiles as a stand-alone, because no real knowledge of the previous books was needed. Like I said, I had mostly forgotten about the content of the first two books, but this didn't hinder me at all. Exiles reads mostly like a psychological thriller slash family drama, where the character dynamics and secrets play a bigger role than the actual missing person case itself. It's true that the case is basically a cold case by then, and it is more about Aaron Falk's observations and slowly revealed clues that help unravel the truth in the end... I didn't expect things to be quite that slow-paced, but I do have to say that the twists ended up working well. The final part most definitely picked up the pace though!

As always, I really enjoyed Jane Harper's writing, and it was easy to keep turning those pages despite the slower pace. There is a lot of focus on the character development and dynamics, and I loved the small town and community feel. I could have done without the love triangle vibe and some of the family drama though, but I guess I'm partly to blame for expecting a more crime-focused story. I liked how Aaron Falk also had developments on a personal level, and how this fitted into the rest of the plot.

As a whole, Exiles ended up being a solid read. I do have to say that it seems quite different than the first two books, but if you enjoy a well written psychological thriller with a dose of family drama and a slower pace, you will most likely have an excellent time reading this story.

Oh I loved this book. Like all of her books it reads well, the story is really good and twisty and this time a bit of romance. I devour each of her books as soon as they come out and this one is equal to all the others.