Hunting Ground by Meghan Holloway is a gripping and suspenseful thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. The author's writing style is fast-paced and filled with tension, making it a page-turner. The characters are well-developed, and the plot is both intricate and thought-provoking. The book takes the reader on a journey of danger and suspense, ultimately leading to a thrilling conclusion. If you enjoy edge-of-your-seat thrillers, I highly recommend Hunting Ground by Meghan Holloway.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the digital ARC I exchange for an honest review.

The twist of knowing who the bad guy is from the start definitely started this book off with a bang! But even knowing this information, the book keeps you pulled in from beginning to end. I heard someone else describe it as “taut and suspenseful” and that is a perfect description. You feel the tension pulsing throughout the pages. The alternating narrators was equally well done, so I definitely recommend this read if you need a good thriller!

LOVED THIS!
The 3 POV's were a great way to tell this story.
It's filled with SO MUCH - history, suspense, guessing, thriller aspects, and a creepiness that chills!!! Which is exactly what I wanted from this story.

My first Meghan Holloway book and I am adding her to my auto-buy list of authors!
Well done!!

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review. Please excuse my tardiness in posting my review as my TBR continuously grows and I keep finding so many book with so little time!

So much gratitude for this copy shared with me, always xo

I was hooked from the beginning of this book. I loved how it was told from three perspectives (the cop, the target, and the killer). In the last few pages the author delivers two twists, making it even more delightful. Although the book is fiction, it touches on the important issue of Missing and Murdered Native Women in North America. This issue doesn’t get the coverage it deserves and it was interesting to see it addressed in a fictional book. I am giving the book 5 stars for the ending, otherwise it would have been 4.5 stars.

Edgy. Full of suspense. A twisty plot that will have you guessing until the end. I am pretty good at figuring out who the bad guy is but I love it even more when I can't. Tushy in chair reading. Pick up this read and try to unravel this amazing puzzle of a book. Happy reading!

Moving to the small town of Raven’s Gap, Montana, Evelyn Hutto just wants to start over after a terrible few years. When her car dies on the way into town, one of the first people she meets is aging deputy, Hector Lewis, a man who’s never got past the unsolved disappearance of his wife and daughter fifteen years earlier. Within days of Evelyn’s arrival, a young woman is found dead… and than another disappears… and another…

Told from the dual points of view of Evelyn and Hector, this is somewhat unusual for a whodunnit in that not only does the reader find out early on who the villain is, but both Evelyn and Hector also know… they just can’t prove it. The killer has been operating for years, getting away with it by taking women nobody is looking for, which brings up a central tenet of this work, the plight of missing and murdered Native American and Canadian women. The statistics, presented at the beginning of each chapter, are nothing short of horrifying, and I think it’s admirable of the author to try and raise awareness about this cause.

However, I think the message gets a little bit lost because Evelyn herself isn’t Native. And neither is the serial killer’s first victim, ‘Rose’, the subject of his obsession, lately supplanted by Evelyn. The other, Native victims, were just throwaways, unimportant to the killer, convenient to take the edge off his thirst without high risk of getting caught because he knew nobody would expend significant resources to look for them. And then he just starts randomly spree killing any woman he can get at, to rattle Evelyn.

I can see what the author’s trying to do here, but it becomes a problem when not only are none of the protagonists Native, but literally none of the surviving characters in the book are either. They’re only victims, people who don’t get to tell their own stories, face their own challenges… defeat their oppressors. Evelyn even gets a job working at a museum curating Native artifacts, a white woman portrayed as an authority on artifacts that aren’t her culture. The whole thing is just not sitting quite right with me, and it could have been fixed so easily by having Evelyn be of Native ancestry herself. Yes, it would have required some more work to accurately portray a Native woman as the protagonist; Evelyn would undoubtedly have experienced some microaggressions at the very least, would have reacted differently to her discoveries in the museum’s archives, but I think it would have made for a much better story, one with much more immediacy and visceral impact to it.

There are good parts about this story, and I do applaud the author for trying to raise awareness about an important issue, but I think it’s clumsily done and falls into some unfortunate traps. Overall, I’ll give it three stars.

In hindsight one can see how a sociopath works. Carefully, clinically and soberly. No passionate spur of the moment decisions for him unless he is goaded by something beyond his control. This was a carefully thought out, planned kidnapping and murder and Evelyn did not have a clue that she was his victim, his ultimate goal in fact.

Moving to a small town to escape a very similar stalking situation which never got resolved (more on that later) Evelyn thinks that at last she has peace but from the word go, Jeff has his eyes on her. The Police Chief himself is a victim where his wife and daughter were abducted, never found. With a Native American population in the area Evelyn has arrived to handle artifacts check on authenticity, history and return them if possible to rightful owners. This is something she is passionate about and she is looking forward to working in this tiny town.

She did not envisage that a series of abductions and murders of girls would take place and all where she is the first person to discover their bodies. It is obviously she is a target and the Police Chief is sadly using her as bait to find out what has happened to the numerous women missing over a long period including his wife and daughter.

What follows is a cat and mouse suspenseful story where the killer is always one step ahead of law enforcement and where Evelyn eventually takes the law into her own hands, knowing fully well that she is finally responsible for her own life. That the law will come in too late for her.

Very well told, and a fabulous read.

The questionable pasts and flaws of the characters made this a suspenseful and exciting read. The author's writing kept me guessing about what would happen throughout reading.

Awesome book! I finished this book too quickly. I couldn’t put it down! The author did a great job of keeping the reader engaged!

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were interesting and I was hooked from the start. The statistics behind the plot were heart breaking. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank. you for the advanced e-ARC win exchange for my honest review. I will post my review on Goodreads and Amazon.

Hunting Ground is a fast-paced suspense read with an attention-grabbing plot. All the characters were flawed with some very questionable past behaviors and each one of them introduced some very fascinating aspects to the story. The author also takes a less than conventional way in writing this suspense novel by introducing the killer at the beginning of the story. In doing so, the reader gets to explore the inner workings of the killer’s twisted mind, which I found very interesting and not surprisingly, disturbing. I also enjoyed the Yellowstone National Park, Montana, setting of this book. With its beautiful landscape descriptions, I felt like I was right there, trudging through the snowy hiking paths in a search of the missing women.

Hunting Ground is an addictive, creepy, and suspenseful read and I highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys this kind of stories.

Thank you NetGalley, Polis Books, and the author for providing me with an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a fantastic book! The characters were life like. The suspense was fast paced. It also had a heartbreaking feel to it too. Highly recommended.

Hunting Ground by Meghan Holloway is chilling! The author leads into each chapter either with quotes of previous serial killers or the horrifying statistics for the vast numbers of Native American women who go missing and/or murdered. This story is told by three characters.
Police Cheif Hector who lives with the stigma of his wife and little girl going missing fifteen years earlier. Many of the townspeople still believe he was responsible. Hector knows he didn't hurt them but continues searching for answers to the mystery.
Evelyn Hutto is moving from Atlanta to Raven's Gap, close to Gardiner, Wyoming. She had secured a job at the Park County Museum where she would be cataloging native artifacts. She is also running from fear and is constantly keeping a vigilant distance from others.
Jeff Roosevelt has many secrets. He also has a hidden rose garden he keeps manicured and tended. Jeff has a spirit inside of him that can not be kept subdued. It is just a matter of time for the right woman to cross his path.
The story is interesting, the characters are well written, and it is suspenseful. I won't post spoilers, but as you read the story you will find each character has flaws, and secrets. I also would have liked to have known more about Faye and Sam at The River Inn.
Publication Date: June 23, 2020
Thank you to NetGallery and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I liked it. The story and descriptions were good. I thought it flowed well and moved in rapid yet slow way to increase the tension and suspense. Having said that it’s a bit too cliched and I didn’t quite like any of the characters. But I can see a lot of people enjoying this.

I enjoyed the time I spent with Meghan Holloway's Hunting Ground. It was a definite gear shift from her debut release, but I liked the thematic relevancy of the novel and felt the plot well-constructed.

I've seen the perspective Holloway before (re: Jennifer Hillier's The Butcher) and while I applaud Holloway's creativity and ambition, I felt the lack of ambiguity needed to be offset with a faster pace than Holloway employed. This, however, is a minor quib in the scheme of things and I'd have absolutely no trouble recommending this fans of the genre.

The villain is creepy and manipulative, but I never felt completely comfortable with either the plot or the characters.

This was a twisty thriller that I loved. My review will be posted on Goodreads. I will link it to this review.

Although Hunting Ground is a work of fiction the information regarding the missing native women and children in America left me really surprised. As I never had contact with those communities I could never imagine that numbers were so high. The story is very well written and developments are adding increasing the tension and the brutality of the crimes. The main character is a woman who had already been stalked and now it´s happening again. The assassin is well known and respected in the small town and now he wants her for whatever reason his broken mind decided it. The description of the places and small details like the falling snow are beautifully written as well the descriptions of the characters peculiarities. Meghan Holloway sure does know how to use the words. First class entertainment!

This is a deadly game of cat and mouse. This story is unique for the fact that there is no guessing who the killer is. You know from the start. He is super creepy and Evelyn sees him for what he immediately.
Evelyn Hutto just wants to start over so she takes a job in Ravens Gap, Montana.
Hector Lewis’s wife and daughter went missing 15 years ago.He never stopped looking for answers. The wintry backdrop just makes everything more ominous. Even at the end there are still unanswered questions. So I’m sure there will be more books. Bring em on!
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.