I've read this author before and enjoyed her books. I liked this story, but it wasn't very memorable for me. Maya, the main character is a speech psychologist with a questionable past. When she meets Lucas, a patient at the mental hospital, she is quickly drawn to him. Lucas is in there for murder. Maya is the only one he will communicate with. Maya also makes decisions that could ruin her. I enjoyed reading the book, but it was more difficult to believe with characters that I didn't really like. I received an e-book from Netgalley.

"Leave No Trace" is another gripping and twisty mystery-thriller from Mindy Mejia. I really enjoyed "Everything You Want Me to Be", so I was excited when I saw she was coming out with a new book. She doesn't disappoint.

Mejia does a great job of creating three-dimensional, believable, complicated characters. The setting, the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, is described with such love and detail that I could imagine I was there in the story.

There are a lot of secrets in this story, a lot of layers and complex motivations. I was as interested in how the relationships would play out as I was in uncovering the mysteries—why Maya’s mother left so suddenly and what really happened to Lucas and his father.

I thoroughly enjoyed “Leave No Trace” and look forward to other books by Mejia.

To me, Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia is 3 1/2 stars. Any time I find myself in this situation I up it to the next number. At times the story was fascinating and at others very slow, and at times very unbelievable. I was given an early copy to review.

I was already a fan of Mindy Mejia's previous novel "Everything You Want Me To Be," so when I agreed to read this story I already had an inkling of what I was in for. However, I don't know much about Minnesota and she does such a fantastic job of integrating the culture and geography that I found myself wanting to take a trip to the Boundary Waters throughout the whole story!

Maya's profession seemed slightly far-fetched as she was given way too much responsibility for someone in her position, but her connection with Lucas was adorable - in a sort of adolescent way. The two seemed like kids both in way over their heads who never had the chance to really grow up according to social norms, but that's what almost made their characters more appealing.

Mindy has a great knack for sucking you into the adventure of the characters and ignoring the consequences along with them - at least while it lasts!

Mindy Mejia is a master at creating people you can see, feel, and touch. You understand where they’re coming from. You care about them. When the two main characters are both social outcasts as they are in Leave No Trace, it’s even better. Now you really want them to succeed.

Maya, a newly graduated speech therapist with a rocky past, is assigned to the case of Lucas, a nineteen-year-old patient in a mental hospital. Ten years before, he and his widowed dad disappeared into the Minnesota wilderness known as the Boundary Waters. They were assumed dead until Lucas broke into an outfitter’s store and was captured.

Now Maya is tasked with getting Lucas to communicate with her about where he and his father went and why. The death of a landlady occurred just before they disappeared, and the father is a prime suspect. But a bond has formed between Maya and Lucas, and Maya is torn between betraying Lucas’s trust or betraying the mentor who has seen her through thick and thin.

A strong sense of place pervades this novel. The author transports us to Duluth, Minnesota, and the Boundary Waters. We feel the draw the glacial lakes have on Lucas, and we find that Maya herself is no stranger to the outdoor life. She’s also extremely knowledgeable about the geology of the area, as that was the professional interest of the mother who deserted Maya and her father and left Maya with only a few precious agates to remember her by. All of it works together brilliantly to make an absorbing book that was impossible to put down. An unexpected twist near the end was just frosting on a well-constructed cake.

About: Leave No Trace is a mystery thriller written by Mindy Mejia. It will be published on 9/4/18 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, paperback, 336 pages. The genres are thriller, mystery, detective, and fiction.

My Experience: I started reading Leave No Trace on 6/16/18 and finished it on 6/25/18. This book is wow! and nature with camping for an extended period of time is an interesting topic! I like the concept of being left behind, either through unplanned death, shunned, or abandonment. I like following the characters and seeing how they are affected when those events happened to them. I personally don’t like how Josiah exit, because the image of him go could give anyone nightmares. I like Maya’s dad’s adventures, though not a good career to have a family for being away most of the time. I like how Maya throw jabs at Bryce. I like learning about agate.

This book is told in the first person point of view following Maya Stark, a 23 years old Speech Therapist at Congdon Psychiatric Facility. Maya is unlike the norm of therapists, she has dyed short pixie-cut hair and tiny silver hoops earrings along her ear. Lucas Blackthorn is famous for his disappearance. He and his dad went camping 10 years ago and never came home. Now the media is saying Lucas is “the boy who came back from the dead”. Lucas coming back aggressive, unresponsive, and alone. He is now admitted to a psychiatric prison for examination and Maya is assigned to him. Another view is Josiah Blackthorn, Lucas’ dad, told in the third person point of view. Josiah is a drifter who doesn’t like to stay inside a house with four walls. He goes camping for weeks at a time. Maya has a mystery past and somehow Lucas only responds to her where he is silent to everyone else.

A well written story, Leave No Trace is a unique read. I love the topic of geology and the wilderness. I love the unlikely character of Maya being a therapist with her history at the facility. Maya indicates that when she goes out for a walk, the image of her would make others pull away from her and yet, here she’s a therapist, someone to help put others back on track. I love the reference to the Lykov family. I rarely look up facts in fiction but the Lykov family and Ho Van Thanh father-son duo truly spark my curiosity. I google them up and read all about them. I devour this book! I love reading about what Maya does and how she handles her job. I love following Josiah’s point of view and his love for his son. I like how outgoing Maya, Josiah, and Lucas are. They don’t lounge around at home but instead out hiking or camping. I like reading about the cost of getting something for free. This book is an excellent read and I highly recommend everyone to read it!

Pro: fast paced, page turner, easy to read, suspense, mystery, nature, diversity, father-son relationship

Con: none

I rate it 5 stars!

***Disclaimer: Many thanks to Atria/Emily Bestler Books for the opportunity to read and review. Please be assured that my opinions are honest.

xoxo,
Jasmine at www.howusefulitis.wordpress.com for more details

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced reader copy.

After reading Everything You Want Me to Be, and thoroughly enjoying it, I couldn't wait to start Leave No Trace. However, I struggled a lot with this one. I could not connect with the characters which made it hard to hold my interest. The book was very slow paced and it felt like I was reading it forever. When I finally reached the ending, it felt abrupt to me.
Since I enjoyed Mindy's first book, Everything You Want Me To Be, I still look forward to her next book. Sadly, this one just didn't work for me.

Leave No Trace is very well written and a book you want to read in one sitting. It's a dark very well constructed story. You will not want to put this one down!

I went into this book with high expectations after really enjoying Everything You Want Me to Be, but unfortunately, I didn't like this one as much. Maya is a speech therapist at a psychiatric facility where she used to be a patient. She was hired by her own therapist. Right off the bat, that seems like a major conflict of interest, and something that's highly unlikely to happen. Then she does all sorts of things that don't seem like they'd be in the job description of a speech therapist. All of that put me off so much that I had a hard time buying the rest of the story. It's a great premise, and the plot, while also pretty far-fetched, is compelling. I just found Maya's character to be frustratingly self-destructive in an unrealistic way.

An intense psychological thriller, taking place in a guarded psychiatric facility and in the thick woods of Minnesota called Boundary Waters.
The suspense builds as Maya a speech therapist, becomes enmeshed with a young resident in the ward considered "dangerous". She is determined at all cost to help him, despite the risks and dangers involved.
This is truly a captivating story that won't let you go until the very last page!
Excellent!

I LOVED this book! I read it in one day. I don't remember the last time I read a book in a day!!

Lucas and Josiah Blackthorne disappeared from society ten years ago and were assumed dead.  Then Lucas is caught robbing a store.  He is violent and nonverbal, so he is sent to a psychiatric facility where he meets Maya who is a speech therapist, wrestling with her own demons.  

Beautiful setting of the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota, a strong female lead character, a thrilling escape, a captivating mysteray and a little romance...this book has everything.  This book also explores issues of mental health in our society and how one action can have a snowball effect and affect people for decades.  I also felt that the author made a statement about power and people who think differently or want different things than the norm.  I thought these issues were well thought out and presented and encouraged deeper thought for the reader.

This is a book with difficult stretches in it in which life's challenges are revealed for what they are, the substance of living. This is also a book to read if star filled nights make you heart ache for more.

What a FANTASTIC read! Mindy Mejia has written a novel that is both totally original and completely addictive! I knew very early into Leave No Trace that this a book that I would be consumed by! The storyline is very well thought out and just when you think you have everything figured out, low and behold there is a major twist you never saw coming. I highly recommend this 5 star novel -I promise it will not disappoint! Mindy Mejia is going to be an automatic 1-click author for me now and I am looking forward to reading her previous novel, Everything You Want Me to Be!

Great Read! The thin line between what is considered sane and what is normal. Complex characters and a compelling plot line. I read this in one setting

After reading “Everything You Want Me to Be” last year, I knew this was an author I would follow. In this outing she gives us a very different book but with equally compelling characters.

The blurb gives a great snapshot of the story so I won’t get into the plot too much. The MC’s are 2 damaged people who have more in common than you initially think. Maya Stark is a speech therapist at Congdon Psychiatric Facility. Her youth, innovative style & maroon hair set her apart. She lives with her dad Brian who really wishes she worked somewhere else. Especially after her…em…spot of trouble a few years back.

Lucas Blackthorne is Congdon’s infamous new resident. After vanishing with his father 10 years ago, his sudden reappearance has caused quite a stir. The media & groupies are camped out at the gates waiting to hear his story but Lucas isn’t talking. Then he meets Maya. And one struggling outsider recognizes another.

Don’t go into this expecting a thrill-a-minute ride. There are moments of action but that’s not what this is about. Like the previous book, it’s about the characters & the effect of the ripples they cause as they pass through each other’s lives. On one hand, it’s a compelling mystery as we slowly learn the MC’s histories. On the other, it touches on deeper themes such as family, loss, memories & the grey area around right vs. wrong.

Strong secondary characters flesh out the story as we follow Maya & Lucas on their deeply personal search to understand the past. The last quarter has some reveals that may make you rethink what you thought you knew. And while a couple of them may stretch disbelief a teensy bit, it’s all part of the journey in this strong, well written tale.

Leave No Trace, written by Mindy Meja is a psycologigal suspenseful thriller.
Maya is a young speech therapist in a mental institution where she was once a patient after suferring depression and abandonment issues.
A new patient is admitted after found breaking into a store. It is discovered he is Lucas ,a 9 year old boy who went missing 10 years ago afer going into the wilderness in Minnesota with his father .
Lucus is very combative and will not speak and becomes Maya's first patient.
As the story develops so does the history of Maya and Lucus's liives before they met and how they connect during treatment.
A well written dark suspense that also shows strong family bonds and compasion. Although a little far fetched is a fasinating read . After all it is fiction but I could relate to all the well developed characters.
I definitely recommend Leave no Trace .

Hmm... while I guess this is classified as a thriller, for me it was more of a slow burning mystery then the fast-paced thrillers I'm used to. It also had a lot of layers and had better developed characters than a lot of thrillers out there. In a way, it was more about the bonds between a mother & daughter and a father & son than the disappearances. Overall an enjoyable read.

To get a better idea of where this novel takes place, I'd recommend doing an image search for "Boundary Waters" -just gorgeous.

Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia is a not only a phycological mystery, but also a parental love story.
With one child having to figure out how her mother could say she loved her, but leave her with her father.
And another young man having a father love him so much they disappeared for 10 years into the back country.
Both of them having to deal with the phycological trauma of the real truth and the real world around them.
Five stars!

Love this author. She does great character development. The corresponding parent-child relationships of the main characters rang true. And the added suspense/mystery elements made for an interesting read.

If I judged a book by its plot, I probably would have passed on this one. But Mindy Mejia wrote it, and even before I read the first word of this new novel, I knew that it was going to be really darn good.

I absolutely LOVED Mindy Mejia's last book, Everything You Want Me To Be. After reading it, I decided that I'd read any story that Mindy Mejia chooses to tell. Her writing is engaging, and her characters are layered, messed up, but relatable because you can see a small part of yourself in each person. She also weaves an elaborate and descriptive backstory to help you understand each characters wants, needs, motivations, and desires.

The story gives a fascinating insight into the Congdon Psychiatric Facility, where the main character Maya works as a speech therapist and was a former patient. Now she is treating patients, and her patient backstories riveted me.

One thing that I found it a little unbelievable is the rapid way that Maya emotionally attached herself to her patient Lucas and made irrational decisions to help him after just meeting him. Her actions violated the professional code of ethics, the law, her job, her health, and her well being. Therapists go through extensive training and are extremely aware of potentially compromising situations with patients.

I liked the strong connections that Maya and Lucas had with their fathers, and their shared experience on growing up without a mother. This story is about abandonment, nature, love, family, mental health, and the ties that bind us, sprinkled with a little bit of geology. It is fast paced, action packed, full of complex characters, and very well written. It made me want to be outdoors, be one with nature, go camping and sleep under the stars.
Leave No Trace is completely different from Mindy Mejia's last book, Everything You Want Me To Be, but it's just as good. The plots are polar opposites, but both books share the same qualities that make them must-reads, and shows how talented the author is at storytelling. I recommend it!