Unfortunately this story was not for me. I found it a bit too much of a slow burn for my liking.
The premise sounded really great and I’m certain for the right reader it’ll be a hit!

What a debut! This one really hit the spot as far as a good, gripping mystery. For a debut, this author brought to the readers a page turner that is filled with twists and turns. I loved it and I highly recommend this one!

Review published on Goodreads, 3 March 2021:

I'm always looking for great new mystery novels, so I'm thrilled to have found this series opener. It features a sympathetic heroine, a series of compelling cold cases, and an atmospheric Irish setting. The story is engrossing, with twists I didn't see coming. I liked the main characters and will definitely continue on with the series in order to spend more time with them. If you like gritty-ish (the book is absolutely R-rated, but it's mostly for language - it's not as gory and graphic as some crime fiction) police procedurals, you'll want to check this one out. I enjoyed it.

I requested this book because of the comparison to Tana French and because it was set in Ireland. I found myself carried along the narrative because I was interested in the dual narratives, the characters themselves, and the writing style. I look forward to more Maggie D'Arcy books in the future!

I've tried to read this one a few times, but unfortunately I don't think that the story and I click.

Told in dual timelines, Maggie is drawn back to Ireland, 20 years after the disappearance of her cousin, to provide information that may hopefully help a new missing woman case.

The narration of this audiobook is beautiful if you like the Irish accent. I was lulled into a trance listening to Marissa Calin and have become a big fan.

The mystery itself was interesting and I finished this book in 2 days as I was drawn in and invested in trying to find what happened to Erin.

This story wraps up nicely and so I’m really intrigued to see what Book 2 will be about. Maybe Maggie and her detective role back in the states? My library has the audiobook, so I’m on the short waitlist!

Thank you to #StMartinsPress #MinotaurBooks and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

What pulled me in and kept me turning until the last page was the Ireland setting and HAVING to know what happened. When I was in college, I studied abroad in Ireland, and this book instantly transported me back to the lush Irish countryside. While this book didn't quite keep me on the edge of my seat, I was intrigued and really was curious to find out the ending. This author was new for me, but I'll definitely be reading more from her in the future.

The Mountains Wild tells the story of Maggie D'arcy as she investigates the disappearance of her cousin, Erin, in Ireland in 1993. Maggie is a detective with the NYPD and tried to investigate back in 1993. 23 years later, Erin's scarf is found and Maggie goes back to investigate the case one more time. Will she be able to find Erin?

This book is so phenomenal that I find it hard to put into words. I loved every word, paragraph, and page. The writing was so unbelievably descriptive. You could feel the wind, smell the peat, and see the Irish Sea. It was such a vivid story that I find it hard to pull my brain back from the landscape. Maggie is such a force to be reckoned with in this story. I love her personality and her quirks. I loved her investigative style and her grit. She was so human that it was hard not to imagine her being your friend. Roly and Griz, Irish Guards who are investigating as well, felt like they were the best kinds of cops out there. The historical aspects that the author threw in the story about the IRA, provos, and IAFNI was so accurate and breathtaking. Ever since reading Say Nothing by Patrick Reede Keene, I have been obsessed with the Irish political landscape. This book had so much rich history included that it enhanced the story so much.

I have always dreamed of going to Ireland and this book made me want to jump on a plane as possible and experience it for myself. This book is a love story to Dublin, Ireland, and their rich history. 5 stars doesn't do this one justice.

Following her cousin, Erin's, disappearance, Maggie D'arcy travels to Dublin, Ireland with the intent of helping locate her. When the case runs cold, she returns home to Long Island, but Erin is never far from her mind. Twenty-three years later, Maggie receives a call from Dublin's Gardai regarding new evidence linked to Erin's disappearance and travels back to where it all began. Alternating between 1993 and 2016, The Mountains Wild captures the way an event can shape someone's life and the subsequent determination to find the truth regarding what happened all of those years before.

One of my favorite things about the novel was the lyrical prose. While the pace was slow for the first half, I could feel the essence of Ireland flowing from the pages. I alternated between reading and listening, and I absolutely loved the audiobook version. Marisa Calin did a phenomenal job with the various accents. Furthermore, there were two songs in the book, and she has a beautiful singing voice. I also enjoyed the police procedural aspect. I am grateful that Stewart Taylor constructed Maggie's character as a detective, as I often struggle with "amateur sleuthing" done by those that have no training or experience. Finally, the book offered exposure to the history of conflict in Ireland, particularly The Troubles, which started in the 60's and lasted several decades, and the impact that it had on the nation.

I wasn't as invested in Maggie's story as I thought I'd be, as the book focused primarily upon her relationship with Erin and how it shaped her, but without Erin ever being present (in 1993 or 2016), I didn't feel anything more than a mild connection. That being said, the book is intended to be the first installment in a series, and I am hoping that Stewart Taylor focuses more upon Maggie in the present moving forward. The pace started to pick up as the pieces came together, and after reading the shocking conclusion, I am already looking forward to the next book.

Thank you to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

THE MOUNTAINS WILD by Sarah Stewart Taylor is everything I crave in a mystery thriller. I chose this book because it took place in Ireland, one of my favorite travel destinations. This police procedural travels from Long Island to Ireland during two timelines featuring Detective Maggie D’Arcy in pursuit of her missing cousin.

View photos from Ireland within this review at my blog, TheZestQuest.com.

Although Erin’s disappearance encouraged Maggie’s detective career, she’s still surprised when her Uncle Danny calls with news after 23 years. Danny owns a bar on Long Island and receives a call from the Guarda in Ireland. Due to his health, he encourages Maggie to go back to Dublin to help sort out the newly found evidence.

Maggie D’Arcy is an engaging heroine. Her past relationships, especially with her cousin, filter into the present investigation. She’s modest while inquisitive, avoiding many dumb blunders, something I really dislike in detective stories.

I liked Maggie immediately, something rare as far as suspense female leads for me as a reader. I’m very picky about realism in my thriller reading. This one was always believable. The Irish detail is especially vivid. I felt as if I was back there in Ireland, traveling with D’Arcy. And, I was surprised right along with her, never suspecting the conclusion.

Word of warning – don’t start this late at night or when you don’t have a chunk of time to devour it. Edgy and sometimes worrisome, I couldn’t sleep and pretty much stayed glued until I was done.

I read the currently available Hardcover version in digital form twice in order to fine-tune my review. I’m excited to announce that the paperback will also be available in June 2021.

THE MOUNTAINS WILD is worth a few sleepless nights. The prose is rhythmic – creating a cadence that encourages speed-reading. I’m especially fond of lyrical writing that flows like music, and this one is beautifully rendered. It made me anxious for A DISTANT GRAVE, the next book in the Maggie D’Arcy series, releasing in June 2021 in hardcover, digital, and audio. THE MOUNTAINS WILD is an enthralling mystery thriller with likable lead characters – recommended read!

Review by Dorine, courtesy of TheZestQuest.com. (Photos taken by me in Ireland in 2012.)

The Mountains Wild is the kind of story that sneaks up on you. I have seen it recommended to fans of Tana French and I can see that comparison. When a friend mentioned that she really liked this one - I knew it should be my next read.

Darcy is a detective in the United States but gets a call to come to Ireland. Her cousin went missing there 23 years ago and the Irish police have just found her scarf and may be close to finding her.

The story is told in alternating timelines between now and flashes to Darcy’s past with her cousin Erin and the time right after she went missing. This is a book that pulls you in and won’t let go - and then suddenly you find yourself unable to stop as you race toward the ending.

I really enjoyed this book and am very excited for the next in the series. Thank you to Minotaur and Netgalley for the free ebook. I also got the audiobook from the library and listened. I have to say the narrator deserves MAJOR kudos for this one - not only did she cover multiple accents including “Irish accent attempting to do an American accent but sounding more like Australian” but she also SANG multiple times (beautifully) including singing IN IRISH. Major major kudos and definitely recommend!!

Published by Minotaur Books on June 23, 2020

Lucid prose makes it easy to follow the complex plot that carries a murder mystery across two continents and 23 years. The story jumps between two time periods as the protagonist tries to understand the circumstances that led to Erin Flaherty’s disappearance and presumed death.

Erin was raised in Long Island but she always had a strong interest in her family’s Irish history, in part because her father, Danny Flaherty, ran the kind of Irish bar that quietly passed the hat to support the IRA. She decides to visit Ireland in 1993, ostensibly to enjoy her youth. Her cousin Maggie D’Arcy eventually realizes that she had another motive.

Erin finds a place to stay in Dublin, where she is visited by some backpacking friends, including Brian Lombardi, who will marry Maggie and have a daughter with her before they divorce. Maggie bears a striking resemblance to Erin. They grew up as best friends.

Not long after the disappearance, Maggie goes to Dublin to look for Erin. Retracing Erin’s journeys, Maggie discovers that Erin had visited the Wicklow Mountains and made a return visit shortly before she disappeared. Other evidence suggests that Erin traveled to Dublin after her second visit to the mountains, but Maggie is poking around mountain paths when she finds Erin’s beloved necklace, making Maggie fear foul play. A German girl went missing in the area at about the same time, creating the fear of a serial killer. Unfortunately, neither Maggie nor the police can find an explanation for Erin’s disappearance.

In 2016, a Galway girl named Niamh Horrigan disappears in the mountains, potentially the latest victim of the serial killer. As the police search for her, they find human remains and a scarf that may have belonged to Erin. Danny doesn’t have the strength to go to Ireland himself so he asks Maggie to meet with the Irish police. By this point, Maggie has been a police officer for 20 years. She meets with Roly Byrne, the Irish cop who befriended her in 1993. After skillfully sidestepping Irish cops who want to freeze her out of the case, Maggie is given a consulting role that includes access to evidence concerning similar murders over the course of almost three decades. The key suspect seems to be Naill Deasey, but he wasn’t living in the mountains when all the murders were committed.

While the story follows a familiar crime thriller formula — girl goes missing, the protagonist must find her before her abductor causes her death — Sarah Stewart Taylor invigorates the story with the kind of detail that makes the formula seem fresh. Some clues point to the truth while others misdirect, causing both Maggie and the reader to wonder where the truth lies. The killer’s identity comes as a surprise, at least to me, although the information needed to solve the whodunit comes fairly late in the story. The parallel stories in 1993 and 2016 allow the two tracks of the story to merge effectively, eventually making clear that Maggie has more than one mystery to solve. The plot is surprisingly tight. Despite weaving together multiple characters, deaths, and time frames, it leaves no loose ends dangling.

Maggie engages in a bit too much handwringing for my taste. When the blurb compares Taylor to Tana French and Kate Atkinson, perhaps handwringing protagonists are what the blurb writer has in mind, but unlike French and Atkinson, Taylor does not make her protagonist’s anger with an unfair world unbearably sanctimonious. I liked the plot of The Mountains Wild more than I liked the protagonist, but the plot is reason enough to read the book.

RECOMMENDED

Really solid murder mystery! Loved the setting in Dublin. Felt like I got a bit of an Irish history lesson paired with a police procedural which was a unique twist.

This would have been a five-star review for me. However, it was slow in the middle and I almost stopped reading. I was glad I continued. The ending was worth the wait with multiple twists I did not see coming.

There were several times the author added in unnecessary political information. I found that distracting. Especially in a time with a heightened political climate, I read to escape the reality of politics.

Another reason I subtracted one star was the confusing timeline.e The book jumped from the time Erin first went missing, twenty years ahead, and to Erin's childhood. Several times I needed to look back to determine if it was a flashback. I think the unclear format adding to the book dragging in the middle.

This book is the first in the Maggie Darcy series. The good ending was not enough to persuade me to read the rest of the series.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

Thank you to my friends at Minotaur Books for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

🏔 The Mountain’s Wild is the start to a new series that will have a regular spot on my shelves. I’m already eagerly awaiting book two! 🏔

23 years ago, Maggie D’Arcy’s cousin Erin disappeared in Ireland. Maggie spends weeks there working with the police and trying to find Erin, an experience that inspires her to become a cop back home in Long Island. Now, more than 20 years later, Maggie receives another call from the Dublin police with a lead and she returns to Ireland, determined not to leave without finding out what happened to her cousin.

This is a wonderful, character-driven mystery. Relationships are a key element to the story and the mystery and the author does a great job at developing Maggie, her family and the detectives in Ireland (especially Roly and Griz, personal faves of mine). While we only learn about Erin through other people’s memories, I felt like I knew her. While there are a lot of characters and the story jumps multiple time periods, I had no problems keeping up, which is always a good sign!

And let’s talk about Ireland, which really is a character itself. The locations are descriptive and detailed and elements of the country’s history and traditions are interwoven into the characters lives and the mystery at hand. While I have some knowledge of the country’s history, the book has also inspired me to read more about it.

This is perfect for readers who love a character-driven, slow burn mystery.

So, to preface: I have never heard of, nor read either of the author’s whose work the synopsis compares this book.

I like mysteries, and I like procedurals. I also like continent-hopping stories of just about any kind. And yet, this book didn’t do much for me. I mean, all the characters were…fine…and the writing was…fine…but honestly, this took me absolutely forever to read because it just never pulled me in.

I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. I’m honestly not even sure if I’d recommend it or not. I guess maybe I would if I knew you REALLY liked mysteries and/or you’d read absolutely anything set in Ireland.

Over two decades ago Maggie D'arcy's family received a troubling phone call. Her cousin Erin had gone missing and there was no trace of her. Maggie headed to Dublin and spent weeks searching for Erin, to no avail. Now, Maggie is a cop on Long Island, and has made the rank of detective. She gets a call from her uncle and soon finds out that the Gardaí located Erin's scarf. What is worse is that another girl has now gone missing. So, Maggie leaves her teenage daughter with her ex-husband and returns to Dublin.

Are the two cases tied together? As stressful as it is, Maggie searches even deeper than she did before, determined to find the answers as to what happened to Erin all of those years ago, as well as to turn over any stone when it comes to finding out what happened to the missing girl of recent events.

The Mountains Wild is the first book in a new mystery series. It is a compelling well-written story that sucked me in from the very first page. The story is told in then and now format which lent a lot to me really feeling for Erin, and how her disappearance led a permanent mark on Maggie's soul. This book also tells of the dynamic of Maggie and Erin's relationship.

I found that I could not put this book down. As a matter of fact, while reading it on my Kindle I happened to look down and realized that I was at 85%, which definitely shows my level of interest. There next book in this series, A Distant Grave, will be released next June, and I will most definitely be reading it so that I can see what case Maggie will be solving.

Many thanks to Minotaur Books and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

This appears to be a first novel in a series with the character of Maggie D’Arcy. Having found herself in a career as a detective, Maggie is haunted by the one case she can’t solve, the 23 year old cold case disappearance of her cousin Erin. A dark cloud has hung over her family after her cousin Erin went to Ireland and was never heard from again. The disappearance of a new girl ignites the case afresh, when canvassing in a remote mountainous area in Ireland turns up some of Erin’s personal belongings. Compelled to stay involved, Maggie returns to assist the lead detective on the current missing girls case in any way she can, in the hopes that finally after 23 years, she can bring answers about her cousin’s disappearance home. As an outsider Maggie finds herself in the unusual position of being left out of the active investigation. Left to her own devices, Maggie feels compelled to scare old ghosts out of the closet. There are multiple flashbacks in this story, going back to when the disappearance was fresh, and the time Maggie spends in Ireland looking for Erin, and from their childhood. Erin and Maggie were very close as single daughters of two brothers. Something changed around the beginning of high school, and the girls grew apart, with Erin becoming more volatile. The flashbacks are easy to follow. The body of the story keeps at a steady pace, it definitely picks up and becomes much more intriguing toward the last 50-60 pages. There is a twist of betrayal at the end that I didn’t really see coming. Than you to Netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

I didn’t know much about this book before starting it, but I was quickly sucked into this atmospheric mystery. I absolutely adored the descriptions of Ireland and felt truly transported while reading. It took a while for the main character, Maggie D’arcy, to grow on me but she did and now I’m eagerly awaiting more books in this series.

Maggie is a homicide detective based on Long Island, but for her whole adult life she’s been swept up in the disappearance of her cousin Erin, while in Ireland, when they were younger. It’s the reason Maggie became a detective, and she’s never stopped thinking about the case. Suddenly there is a new lead, and Maggie goes back to Ireland to see what can be uncovered.

I enjoyed the even pacing of this one and was so drawn into the story, as it unfolded, that I didn’t find myself trying to guess at the ending like I usually do, so it was a complete surprise to me when it all became clear.

I also listened to part of this one as an audiobook, which was narrated by Marisa Calin. Her natural accent is Irish, and a pleasure to listen to. While I didn’t always love her American accent, she performed the book so well, building the atmosphere and bringing the characters to life. The audiobook is 10 hours and 48 minutes but felt shorter to me.

This was such a refreshing read which I feel like is an unusual thing to say of a thriller/mystery novel!

More than twenty years ago, Erin go missing in Ireland. Her body is never found and there were no leads, but now another girl goes missing and Erin's scarf is found. Are these cases connected? Maggie, Erin's cousin, who is now a detective in Long Island comes back to hopefully help find Erin and the new missing girl once and for all. This slow burn, police procedural switches back and forth between 1993 and 2016 and we follow Maggie in her search for the truth.

I loved all the descriptions of Ireland as it reminded me of my short time there and as I'm very much missing traveling, I was happy to be transported back there. I also felt like every question the book posed throughout was answered by the end which is maybe why I consider this a refreshing read. I hope to follow more of Maggie's life and detective cases in the future!