To be honest at first it was hard to get into this book but then it got more interesting . I ended up really liking this book. I kind of wished there had been a point of view of the mother, maybe a diary. I wanted to know why. Thank you Net Galley .

You know those books that have all the potential to be great? That start with a premise that is so freaking exciting that you can't put it down?....Now, do you know those books that about 200 pages in add in a "twist" that is so just...UGH that it kind of ruins it for you? That's this.

Minka Kent has a good story here. Two sisters, left to survive in their cabin as winter approaches and the food supply dwindles. Think: The Village (a HIGHLY underrated movie, IMO.) Anyway, there's also the plot/plight of Nicolette - the poor little rich girl, whose hot, photographer husband is being weird.

Just....man. This was going to be so, so, so good, but then - as mentioned by me and other reviewers - the twist around page 200, turned this book into ... really? Come on! Territory for me.

Still - it was enjoyable.

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

Many thanks to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer, and Minka Kent for the opportunity to read and review her latest book. Thoroughly engrossing book - I loved it!

Two girls are left alone in a remote cabin in Upstate New York when their mother leaves to take their youngest sister for medical help - and they never return. The girls do their best to survive but they are living totally off-the-grid and supplies have run out. Their worst fears come to life when a strange man bursts into their cabin looking for their mother.

Told in alternate chapters between the girls and a married woman having doubts about her husband. She fears that he is seeing someone else and it threatens to bring back depression she has fought hard to conquer.

There was something about this book - easily readable, short chapters, that had me glued to the pages to see how it was going to turn out. Even when I may have guessed some paths, it was still such an intriguing read for me.

The Stillwater Girls is a fast paced and extremely gripping read! A solid set of characters and I enjoyed the back and forth between the two main characters, Nic & Wren. At times there were moments where I found myself questioning the realness of certain situations but overall I could not put this book down!! Minka Kent is a new to me author and I'm excited to read more of her work. Huge thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my ARC!!

The Stillwater Girls grabbed me instantly, two storylines running parallel that seem completely unrelated. Of course they’re not, but what’s the connection? What is going on?!

I absolutely loved the first three quarters of this book and sped through it desperately wanting answers. The ending was okay, but maybe a little far fetched for me. However it wrapped up well and was still enjoyable. This is definitely a nice, quick, easy read!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this review copy.

The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent was an amazing book about survival. Two girls who are raised in a cabin in the woods, with no knowlege of the modern world are suddenly thrust into it. As they begin to find out about their past, everything changes.

I loved this book and would love if it got turned into a movie/TV show. I read it in one day and loved the little twists and the way the characters were developed to make you believe one thing or another. I would love to read a prequel to this book as well!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book!

It is a good book but it tends to the over melodramatic and requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.
Also, Nicolette is a character that I found annoying, boring, possessive and controlling so it was very hard to relate to her. I kept just wishing her chapter ended soon so I could go back to Wren.

There are LOADS of plot holes and things that would never, ever happen that way in real life and thus the story wouldn't work. The 3 stars, actually are solely for Wren and Sage who were excellently written characters and who I liked very much.

This author has been an inconsistent one for me. 4 novels released, 3 read; the first I absolutely loved. The second was terrible, in my view. Now this was more like a… meh. :/

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

This book was a very suspenseful and gripping thriller. It merged together two strangely different narratives and wrapped it all together with a massive ‘happily ever after’ at the end. The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent was a captivating book, but the ending was way too unrealistic.

Nicolette is married to a world class photographer, but she feels like her world is disappearing all around her. She’s barely able to hold together her marriage with Brant. Unable to have any children, she’s desperate to have a foster child. Her husband, however, is not so keen. He’s content traveling the world taking photographs.

Wren and her little sister Sage are living in a cabin out in the forest, and they’re quickly running out of supplies. Their mother left them some months ago with their other sister, Evie, who is desperately ill. The only instructions their mother gave them was to never open the door to anyone but her. When will she return? Will they survive with the little supplies that they have, or will they freeze in the frigid cold? Then comes the impending late-night knock on their door.

These two narratives are completely different. It was like a jigsaw puzzle and I was trying to figure out how these two story-lines were going to come together, but once they were, it was clever and the story left me eager to keep reading. It was intriguing and I found myself hooked. It wasn’t until the end that I found myself rather disappointed by this book. I’m not going to spoil the book so I’ll leave it there.

Besides the unrealistic and disappointing ending, I truly found The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent enjoyable. I rushed through it in one sitting and found myself captivated by where the author was taking us. I thought the characters were fantastically well written and the dialogues where charming. I would definitely read another book by Minka Kent, but I will say, she needs to work on her endings.

Thank you to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer and Minka Kent for an ARC to read and review. This will be published April 9, 2019.

This is the first book I read by this author but it won't be my last. The characters were likeable. I could not put this book down, whenever life got in the way I couldn't wait to get back into Stillwater forest to see want was happening. Loved this would !! I want to thank Netgalley for the opportunity to discover this amazing aurhor. I will be looking for more of her work.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer, NetGalley & Minka Kent for the free digital copy. This book is available April 9!

🌟BOOK REVIEW🌟

▪️MY THOUGHTS
✔️I read this book in a few days, which rarely ever happens! I was hooked right away - the story was giving me “The Village” vibes so I was instantly intrigued. However, as the story progressed it slowed down a bit and I wasn’t as invested in the characters. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the book but I was just eager to know how this was all going to play out.

▪️OVERALL RUNDOWN
✔️I thought the book was really interesting. I did wish that it went deeper into how the sisters were so out of touch with the modern world. I found that part of it very interesting so I could have used more of it! Overall it was a solid read and I would recommend it to readers looking for a light mystery/thriller

▪️TITLE RUNDOWN
Sisters
Thriller
Intel
Love
Long
Winter
Aftermath
Tainted reality
Enjoyable
Rage
Girls
Invisible
Running
Lies
Secrets

▪️STAR RATING
✔️🌟🌟🌟💫/5

I was loving this book until the end. The ending felt rushed, too easy, a little lackluster and wrapped up in a neat little bow too quickly. I was expecting something more. That brought the rating down for me. The first 3/4 was addicting and had me flipping the pages quickly, then the last section killed that vibe a bit.

I did love that it was a very quick read with short chapters. I read this in just over 4 hours total.

Character development was decent. I knew that Nic's initial thoughts about Brant's behavior were off - that would have been too easy and typical.
Davis was easy to hate, despite the brief interactions with him.
Loved Brant (I never heard that name before). I could tell he was definitely hiding something but couldn't figure it out so that was good. I don't try too hard to figure out the endings so if I do, it annoys me because I feel like I'm ruining it for myself.

Overall a great book, but the ending fell flat for me. 3.5/5 rounded to 4.

(Review will also be posted on Goodreads and Instagram @thewineingreader)

Another great book by Minka Kent! I could not put this book down, I couldn’t wait to see how Nicolette’s story came together with Wren’s. Just when you thought you know where this story was going, there was another twist. Looking forward to more books by this author. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy.

I recently read ’The Memory Watcher’ by Minka Kent and gave it a rare five star review. I was really excited to preview her new novel and although the writing is strong the story line was a little weaker than I expected. Still a good read, but without the normal big twists and turns I expected.

Thanks Netgalley and the publisher/author for this ARC for my honest review.

I was SOO excited to read this book. I’m a huge fan of books that involve storylines like Wren’s. Living off the grid or in cults/communes, etc. the book is definitely different. It has what seems like two totally different stories occurring in the first and second half. But hey obciously come together into one. In quite a surprising way of course!

Believe me, it’s worth the read.

On Trust: The Stillwater Girls
I know I've talked about this before--the difficulty of reading a new author when you're not sure if you're supposed to trust the characters or not. The Stillwater Girls, by Minka Kent, is a perfect example of this, and I'm trying to pick it apart.

For the first half of the book, you're reading two stories in alternating chapters from two narrators. One is from Wren, who lives in a cabin in the deep woods with her sister Sage, and whose mother left weeks ago to take their youngest sister Evie to a hospital. Wren has never been off their homestead, and if Mother doesn't come back, they might starve.

The other story is about Nicolette, who lives in a lonely part of upstate New York with her photographer husband, whom she loves deeply but suspects might be having an affair. They have been unable to have children (and I'd include some content warning for infertility struggles) and this has put pressure on the marriage. The two stories appear to have nothing to do with each other for a very long time.

Now, my objective opinion is that it took too long to bring the two stories together. Wren's story was compelling in its own right, but Nicolette's didn't grab me, and I was mostly waiting for her to have something to do with Wren. This is partly a pet peeve of mine; I have zero interest in whether anyone's husband is cheating on them. If he's murdering people or conspiring against her, I'm on board, but if he's just sleeping around, even if he's working really hard to hide it, I'm sorry, that is nowhere near thrilling to be even source of tension in a thriller.

So I was pretty dismissive of Nicolette. She seems very normal, maybe a little shallow and spoiled. And I've realized that I've been trying to figure out whether this is a quality of her character or a judgement I'm making. Does she seem shallow because I am quick to judge people as shallow, or because the author is painting her as shallow? I struggled with this for a lot of the book; if the author is painting her as such, it's actually pretty subtle and well done, because it's not enough to turn me against her or make me doubt her, but I've definitely noted it.

If I knew the author well enough to feel confident, I would be creeped out by how uneasy the character makes me. But writing this, I realize that I have had another piece of important information that I was ignoring; Wren. The other point of view character has a very different voice and a very different life and personality. But there's no hint in Wren of any reason to doubt her judgement, in spite of her isolation and ignorance.

In fact, after the two stories intersect, Wren offers a check on Nicolette's observations. The language Nicolette uses about Wren doesn't quite jibe with the character we know from Wren's chapters; a good deal of Nicolette's shallowness comes through in how she perceives Wren (as "little" and "innocent").

I'm nearing the end of the book now, but I think I've talked myself around to trusting the author. Which has me excited to get back to it and see what's going to happen; I'm pretty sure we're coming up on a big twist.

I stand by my assessment that there are some pacing problems with the first half. But there's also a compelling story in there, and now I very much want to know how it ends.

Wren
Mama has been gone for 63 days .Wren remembers Evie,nine now with her curly blonde hair.Sage now 18 plays with. a doll sometimes for comfort.Mama went to get help for Evie who was sick with fever their food and supplies are dwindling down.

Nicolette
She is having martial problems.nicolette wants to be a foster parent. I got bored after the beginning.

Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York. When the youngest grows gravely ill, their mother leaves with the child to get help from a nearby town. And they never return.

As the months pass, hope vanishes. Supplies are low. Livestock is dying. A brutal winter is bearing down. Then comes the stranger. He claims to be looking for the girls’ mother, and he’s not leaving without them.

To escape, Wren and her sister must break the rule they’ve grown up with: never go beyond the forest.

Past the thicket of dread, they come upon a house on the other side of the pines. This is where Wren and Sage must confront something more chilling than the unknowable. They’ll discover what’s been hidden from them, what they’re running from, and the secrets that have left them in the dark their entire lives.

I enjoyed the book. It had some moments which felt unbelieve. But, I was left confused about the "Mom" that raised them. It just felt odd. Nicolette was another. Just too unreal.
Thank you, NetGalley for the arc to review.
Thanks

This is a hard one to review because while I was really enraptured by it, there was so much that felt unrealistic or difficult to believe. Let me give it my best shot.

This book is really two separate, very different stories that merge into one. And I really love those kind of books under almost any circumstances, so long as the author can make it all come together in a way that makes sense. And this… kind of does? Essentially, the story is split up in two parts: Wren’s narration, and Nicolette’s. Wren is a 19 year old girl who has lived with her two sisters and mother in a secluded cabin for practically all of her life. The girls know very little about the world beyond the woods besides what their mother has told them. Nicolette is a thirty-something year old woman who has been married for over a decade. She’s suddenly convinced that her husband has been cheating on her, and she’s on a mission to get hard evidence. How, you may wonder, could these two stories possibly connect?

(I’m not going to spoil that for you, because I do think it was an interesting twist, albeit the fairly unrealistic circumstances surrounding everything)

A book like this can be hard to review in a normal way because mysteries or suspense stories aren’t usually set up to give you lots of character development or time to work out how you feel about the plot. They are generally pretty fast paced, and the reader has to be kept in the dark for a lot of the story so that they don’t see the big reveal coming. This followed those guidelines pretty well, though I will admit that some of the plot was a bit predictable. I most certainly didn’t see that big plot twist coming but there was a good amount of this book that you can foresee pretty easily.

Despite that fact, what made me really enjoy this read was the writing and narration. I’ve never read a Minka Kent novel before but based on other reviews, it seems a lot of people really enjoy her work. Her writing was phenomenal for me and made for a really great reading experience. The way she sets up scenarios reminded me a lot of Gillian Flynn, and since she’s one of my favorite authors, that’s a good thing. The split between the story telling also gives for an all-around type of experience. These two women seem so vastly different and (mentally) worlds away, yet their stories intertwine in a dark, twisted way. That’s my kind of book. I didn’t necessarily feel connected to either of them but I was very invested in their stories.

Overall, it was a decent time if you enjoy psychological thrillers. It certainly had my mind rushing to try to figure out what exactly was going on, and for that reason, I read this entire thing in one day. It didn’t fail to keep me interested at all. It lacks the well-planned ending I was hoping for (really, the big reveal almost feels like someone was presented with this story and forced to come up with a way to make it all fit together in 2 minutes) but it’s still pretty enjoyable. Basically, I’m not mad at it.

This story took me awhile to read. Probably because it isn't the type of story I usually read.
I didn't find it confusing.... and the story was well written. It only took place from 2 people's viewpoints. In my opinion, these were the two most important characters so I am glad this is who she choose to write though.

I now know who the actual author of this story is and I can tell you I LOVE her romance stories. I always rate them with at least 4 starts, but usually 5 stars. I'm giving this one 3.5 stars. It didn't capture my attention. HOWEVER, keep in mind that is probably because I am not really into this genre.

I think The Stillwater Girls just became my new favorite read of 2019 so far! Simply amazing definitely gets a 5🌟review from me.  It was a captivating  fast paced thriller that sucked me right in, i devoured this book in less then a day.
The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent has a publication date of April 9th and you should get a copy to enjoy yourself

The book is told from a multiple point of view. We Start off by meeting Wren the oldest sister of 3 who lives in a cabin in the woods with their mother. Her youngest sister gets so sick the mother leaves the cabin to go into a town to find help, leaving the two older girls instructions not to open the door for anyone.  Its now been 73 days and their mother and sister haven't returned and wren is getting worried. When there is a knock at the door.
You Then meet  Nicolette a grown women married to a prestiged photographer. They are well off living off a trust fund using the money Brandt makes as extra money.  They can't have children because nicolette had a medical emergency that ended in a hysterectomy.
These two worlds couldn't be any further apart,  i was intrigued to find out how these two stories would combine. They did in a way i didn't see coming.  Then twist after twist the story kept going. 
Kent did an amazing job engaging me into the lives of all the characters i felt for Nicolette when she found out her husband's "secret". Kent's character development was spot on and the plots and the way everything tied together,  the twists was just phenomenal, i don't think i have a bad thing to say. 

I would like to thank Thomas & Mercer and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review