Atmospheric and mysterious, I couldn’t stop turning the pages.
Blending various aspects of mental health, the wilderness, and several mysteries that meld into one, Leave no Trace was an atmospheric page-turner that kept me guessing until the very end.
A decade ago, Josiah Blackthorn and his 9 year old son Lucas all but disappeared in the wilderness of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. Present day, Lucas is admitted to the mental health facility where Maya Stark works as a speech therapist, and oddly enough, she’s the only one he will talk to. She’s assigned to his case even though she lacks the qualifications, because everyone, it seems, wants to know what happened to Lucas and his father and what made them flee, if anything did. The only thing Lucas wants is to find his father, who was tragically ill when he left him. With his father’s life hanging in the balance, Lucas will do anything to make it back to the wilds in hopes of saving his dad. Several mysteries are at play from the very beginning, including the reason why Lucas lands in the facility in the first place, and Mejia deftly ties every mystery together to one heartbreaking conclusion.
So much was going on with Leave no Trace that there was excitement to be had on every page. I adore stories of mental hospitals, I adore stories where people go off the grid, I love stories where everyone has secrets and they’re slowly, ever so slowly, revealed. This book had all of that and more. It also takes a good look at mental health and how devastating it can be on not only the one suffering, but also to those around them. I started this yesterday afternoon planning to read “just a bit”, and ended up finishing it later that night because it was just so compelling and so dang immersive, and I just HAD to see how Lucas’s and Maya’s stories would connect, if they ever did. Not to mention, I’ve never heard of Boundary Waters and I’ve been doing nothing but googling pictures of it after finishing this book. Which is wasted time well-spent, in case you’re wondering, because it’s absolutely gorgeous.
Bottom line — Mejia tells a good tale with Leave no Trace, filled with dynamic and varied characters, with the Minnesotan wilderness permeating every aspect of this book. She’s an author I fell in love with last year after reading the incredibly creepy Everything You Want Me to Be, so of course I recommend this one as well. But don’t take my word for it, just do yourself a favor and read something, anything, by this author because she truly is a fantastic storyteller.
*ARC received courtesy of NetGalley and BookishFirst.
A decade ago, Josiah Blackthorn and his 9 year old son Lucas all but disappeared in the wilderness of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. Present day, Lucas is admitted to the mental health facility where Maya Stark works as a speech therapist, and oddly enough, she’s the only one he will talk to. She’s assigned to his case even though she lacks the qualifications, because everyone, it seems, wants to know what happened to Lucas and his father and what made them flee, if anything did. The only thing Lucas wants is to find his father, who was tragically ill when he left him. With his father’s life hanging in the balance, Lucas will do anything to make it back to the wilds in hopes of saving his dad. Several mysteries are at play from the very beginning, including the reason why Lucas lands in the facility in the first place, and Mejia deftly ties every mystery together to one heartbreaking conclusion.
So much was going on with Leave no Trace that there was excitement to be had on every page. I adore stories of mental hospitals, I adore stories where people go off the grid, I love stories where everyone has secrets and they’re slowly, ever so slowly, revealed. This book had all of that and more. It also takes a good look at mental health and how devastating it can be on not only the one suffering, but also to those around them. I started this yesterday afternoon planning to read “just a bit”, and ended up finishing it later that night because it was just so compelling and so dang immersive, and I just HAD to see how Lucas’s and Maya’s stories would connect, if they ever did. Not to mention, I’ve never heard of Boundary Waters and I’ve been doing nothing but googling pictures of it after finishing this book. Which is wasted time well-spent, in case you’re wondering, because it’s absolutely gorgeous.
Bottom line — Mejia tells a good tale with Leave no Trace, filled with dynamic and varied characters, with the Minnesotan wilderness permeating every aspect of this book. She’s an author I fell in love with last year after reading the incredibly creepy Everything You Want Me to Be, so of course I recommend this one as well. But don’t take my word for it, just do yourself a favor and read something, anything, by this author because she truly is a fantastic storyteller.
*ARC received courtesy of NetGalley and BookishFirst.