This mystery has the best setting and I felt like I was in wine country in Australia, surrounded by the beauty of the landscape. Then taken to the food and wine festival/carnival the night Kim Gillespie went missing. This story jumps easily from the night Kim went missing to present day (a year later) when her family and friends gather at the carnival trying to dig up new leads in her disappearance. Aaron Falk is a friend of the family and an investigator who is looking into her disappearance and fitting all the pieces from when he was visiting last year and what they discover this year.

This audiobook was great, the accent of the narrator is perfectly suited. I did have to kind of train my brain to listen because the narrator was very soft spoken. This story is a slow burn and really takes the reader on a trail to discovery. I felt like the middle was a bit repetitive, going over the same possible leads. But the language is so pretty, and the writing is fantastic. The ending was really great and it all came together nicely by the epilogue.

I have not read the two previous books but didn't feel like I missed anything, by not reading them in order.

This is the 3rd and final book in this trilogy of Aaron Falk series but it easily reads as a standalone. I listened to the audiobook but you need to pay close attention to the list of characters and happenings. One year ago a mother (Kim Gillespie) went missing while leaving her baby (Zoe) in its pram at a wine festival. Five years prior was a hit and run and Gemma's husband died. This is a slow-burn plot of the story which leaves the reader to an ending twist and how Harper finished both mysteries. There are multiple POV's and a dual timeline (a week in the present, a year earlier and three years later). If you like cleverly-plotted mysteries with a hint of romance, then you will love this book. I would like to thank Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for a copy for an honest review.

I don’t know if it’s the audio I didn’t care for, the fact that this is book 3 of a series so I don’t have the character connections I needed or a combination of both but I just really didn’t care for this one.

I read another book by this author last year and remembered enjoying it. When I saw this on NetGalley I was beyond excited. However, this just wasn’t it for me. I found I had little to no connection with the characters and I honestly just didn’t care what happened.

The audio didn’t hold my attention either - I found myself needing to back track several times and I’m convinced I still missed things. This just isn’t for me - and that’s okay!

⭐️⭐️💫

2.5 stars.

Honestly, after how much I loved The Lost Man and Force of Nature, The Exiles was massively disappointing. It lacked Harper’s distinctive voice and the unique and compelling way that she describes and characterizes the Australian landscape. It was just another mystery, lacking the organization and sense of urgency of a typical police procedural. The characters were so focused on love and romantic entanglements that I felt like I was watching a prime time ABC drama instead of reading a solid police procedural mystery.

Everything wrapped up super neatly and kind of blandly, making this feel like a very unfitting end to the legacy Harper created for Aaron Falk in The Dry. I was thinking about giving up, but curiosity is my fatal flaw and so I wanted to know what the answers were. Honestly, the payoff wasn’t worth it.

Exiles by Jane Harper

This is book #3 in the Aaron Falk Series. Underneath the ferris wheel at the Marralee Valley Annual Food and Wine Festival is a pram bay, for attendees to leave their prams, pushchairs, bikes, scooters, etc. But, when the festival closes, there is a single uncollected pram, and on closer inspection a technician discovers six week old Zoe Gillespie sleeping within but her mother Kim is missing.

The investigation leads to one of Kim’s shoes being found in the dam filter of the reservoir, the drop overlooking it located within walking distance of the fairground. What happened to Kim? Was it suicide? Murder? Or did Kim simply leave of her own?

Aaron Falk was at the festival that night, visiting Marralee, for Greg Raco’s son’s christening. It’s now a year to the day since Kim disappeared, and Aaron has returned to Marralee for the same christening, which was postponed due to the tragedy, as Kim has close personal ties to Greg’s family.

Neither the police, nor those closest to Kim are any the wiser regarding what happened to her twelve months prior. Opening night of the Food and Wine Festival has rolled around again, and it is hoped that a planned appeal and tribute will refresh the memories of those who attended the previous year, and unearth fresh clues regarding what really happened to Kim Gillespie?

I like the that the story takes place in Australia. It is up to Falk to figure out what happened to Kim Gillespie. It is fast pace read that gets your heart pumping to get to the bottom of this case. I cannot wait to read more from this author.

Narrated by Stephen Shanahan does a great job bringing characters to life. It was easy to follow along and the story was gripping to pull you in. I recommend this thriller to anyone who likes a good mystery and who also likes it to take place in the land down under.

Thank you to Netgalley and MacMillan audio for a free audio copy of Exiles for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

A woman leaves her infant in a stroller and disappears into the crowd at a fair. One year later Aaron Falk is being pulled into the investigation while visiting close friends who knew her well. This is an extremely slow burn mystery. This is for the people who are hear to enjoy the scenery, not sit on the edge of their seats in suspense. I was a little disappointed in the amount of time it took for the book to pick up speed but very satisfied with the resolution.

Thank you to Netgalley, Jane Harper, and Macmillan audio for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I've adored MC Aaron Falk since first reading The Dry by Jane Harper. It was such and intense and atmospheric story. I was less excited about Force of Nature, the second Aaron Falk novel. It was good and the mountains provided a little bit of mystery and atmosphere but not like the sweltering dry heat of The Dry.

Exiles falls somewhere in between. I enjoyed it but it's definitely more of a character driven mystery with Falk returning to Southern Australia wine country for the christening of his best mate's young son, which had been delayed a year due to an unsolved missing persons case. Now everyone's back together in this small town where everyone knows everyone and everything about everyone - or so they thought. New details begin to surface and Falk and Raco begin their own discussions and investigation into the case.

This is definitely a slow burn, and the action really doesn't pick up until about the last third of the book. It's told primarily through Falk perspective except for two surprise chapters late in the book. We see what happened - or what people think happened - a year ago at the community fair and go farther back to learn more about the missing woman Kim and others in her orbit. It's a pretty sad story, I will say that!

Falk is also drawn to Gemma, a friend of Raco's who Falk met in Melbourne 18 months earlier. Their insta-love was a little unbelievable, but it was still a sweet and lovable story line as Falk starts questioning his past and the choices he's made as well as his future.

Overall, a good read once you get past the slow start. Many thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the complimentary audiobook. I've read all three of these on audiobook and do love a good Aussie accent!

Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk series is the kind that gets better with every installment. Not only is each book individually engrossing on its own, but we learn more about Aaron and become more attached to him as a character. The audio version is fantastic. It’s perfectly paced and atmospheric! I thought I had put the pieces of what happened to Kim Gillespie together, but Jane Harper got me again! I already can’t wait for the next Aaron Falk!

A competently plotted procedural/domestic mystery.

Generally speaking I’ve enjoyed Jane Harper’s work, though I found her first three books to be significantly better than her last two. These seem to be veering more towards domestic drama, which isn’t my preference.

I loved the atmospheric feel of The Lost Man and felt that the first two Aaron Falk books were compellingly plotted. The last two books have been a bit of a drop off on both counts, though I certainly liked this better than The Survivors.

Falk is a great character and that’s no less true in this book than in any of the previous novels in the series. But this is a really, really slow plot (and this is coming from someone who loves slow burns), resulting in something more akin to dull than to creeping. The story also has no real sense of place or atmosphere, always a big drawback for a reader like me.

If you like a lot of nuanced drama between friends and neighbors, then you’ll likely enjoy this a lot more than I did. Harper is still a good writer, and the mystery, if ultimately disappointing to me and unengaging, is certainly well-plotted and structured.

Though it’s slow moving, I think this worked fine as an audiobook, and the narrator did a lovely job.

Ultimately this was just too unevocative and too enmeshed in petty jealousies and domestic drama for me, and I think I’m probably out on Harper going forward since she seems to be leaning this way of late.

There was nothing really thrilling about this story. I found it to be very slow and not that compelling. I have not read the other books in this series but after reading this I don't really want to.

"We see what we expect to see."

I was sad to see that this was the end of the Falk series, but it also made sense. In the first book Faulk was drawn to the crime for personal reasons, and in the second one it was related to a case. But he's not a homicide detective, so finding plausible connections to non-financial crimes without stretching incredulity was also probably difficult. The earlier books had also explored some personal themes of Faulk's life and I thought Exiles did a good job bringing those together in a satisfying way that needed an ending.

I listened to this on audio read by Stephen Shanahan, who -- as I have mentioned before -- I would listen to read the phone book, and the whole thing was just so satisfying. I love the way Harper writes dialogue, and describes the settings, towns and characters of these small fictional towns in Australia.

The crime here is the disappearance of a woman a year earlier and the small tight-knight community and group of friends still looking for answers. This is the only one of the three Faulk books not to be told in alternating timelines, and it's still as immersive and gripping as the others. But toward the end there's a cheat made toward two different chapters from other points of view, and while they added a lot of context it felt slightly like a cheat? But there was a slightly longer epilogue that I appreciated, so on the whole I still really loved this and would highly recommend the whole series.

Thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for providing me a free advanced copy of the audiobook in exchange for this honest review.

Aaron Falk, AFP Financial Division is back with another mystery to solve. As with the previous two books, I devoured the book. Each book is set in a picturesque setting that comes alive as you turn the pages. There are a lot of characters in the story, sometimes making it difficult to keep track of all of them. The story has multiple points of view and switches time periods between the two mysteries.
The book has mystery, intrigue and family drama. Harper does a great job in the ending wrapping up the two mysteries.
I would recommend this one for sure! Thank you Netgallery and Macmillan Audio for my ARC.

Someone in wine country has a secret and unfortunately for them federal investigator Aaron fob is coming for a christening. His close friend Reiko and his wife has recently had a little boy in the named it up to him an asked if he would be The Godfather this is why he was there the night Kim Gillespie went missing she it’s Raiko‘s brother Charlie’s ex-girlfriend and the mother to his daughter Zara end the reason he returns a year later for a memorial. It happened during the town‘s wine and craft festival her daughter Zara wants to hold a moment of silence and hand out flyers to see if they can jog any memories of the tourists that come to the festival every year. When people get together during the tragedy they want to help out with whatever talents they have and with Aaron that’s investigating. From the many talks with his good friend Reiko and from talking to Zara and Joel a boy who claims despite what others say that Kim never walked past his security post. Things get complicated though when Erin finds hisself attracted to Jimma’s’s Joel‘s stepmother and his dad‘s widow. He was another victim of an unsolved hit and run. Can Aaron bring the answers they need to move on with their life and will he and Gemma become more than just a passing acquaintance? I absolutely loved this book I have been really obsessed with Australian literature lately but I would’ve loved this book even before my new obsession. I wish this would become a cerise. I love Aaron, Reiko, his wife is brother Charlie such a lovable characters and such a great mystery that there is no way you will know the ending to it I I certainly didn’t. I can’t say enough about this book I listen to the audio and thought the narration was top notch I could probably listen to this guy read the phone book, he was not only a pleasure to listen to he does a great job. This is a total five star audiobook and mystery. I absolutely loved it. I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Jane Harper always knows how to suck me in!! I was hooked from the first chapter.. quite literally the first couple pages!

I enjoy the Aaron Falk stories

This book had some unexpected twists and turns that I hadn’t really thought about.

the narrator was also very enjoyable and did a great job!

I always finish ARCs because I am so grateful so all of those that I receive. I really wanted to like Exiles by Jane Harper but I did not. I could not get into it and stop and started it again over and over.

I am sure others will enjoy this story more than I did. It definitely has an interesting synopsis, but I could not connect with the characters or plot or the narrator.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillian Audio for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks MacMillan Audio and NetGalley for this advanced audiobook. I found it to be a slow burn. The ending did not come as a surprise. However, the writing style is wonderful, and I loved the narrator.

I’m a sucker for the Aaron Falk books & Stephen Shanahan’s narration. As always, Jane Harper delivers us a solid mystery with a cast of sympathetic but secretive suspects.

If you like mysteries that aren’t too graphic, but still have good tension & resolution, this is for you! And of course if you’re a Harper fan or an Aaron Falk series fan, you’ll love it!

As many stories about missing people as there are, one needs to be unique to stand out. I wish I could say this one did. At times, I did find it engaging, though not mind-blowing.

Thanks NetGalley and McMillan Audio.

Wow! What a rollercoaster of a ride. Jane Harper does it again with the third installment in her Aaron Falk series. A beautiful Spring night, the Australian countryside and a community festival…sounds perfect, until it isn’t. At the close of the day an occupied baby pram is found abandoned and the mother Kim Gillespie has vanished seemingly into thin air. A year later questions still remain as friends and family question why, what happened, and could long buried secrets have caused this horrible nightmare. The twists and turns are many and you’ll be reading this all night long. This is my favorite of her books thus far. Jane Harper is an incredible storyteller and brilliant author. I can’t wait for book #4.

Thanks to Net Galley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC.

Secrets, sadness, and the bonds between friends and family combine in this excellent addition to Jane Harper’s series featuring police officer/investigator Aaron Falk.

One of the most enjoyable things about Harper’s books is that the setting becomes an integral part of the story… lush vineyards, rolling valleys, foreboding bush lands all combine to enrich the reading or listening experience of Exiles.

In Exiles, Falk has traveled to Marralee Valley in South Australia’s wine country for the christening of his friends’ young son. It is also opening day for the town’s annual food and wine festival, from which a woman disappeared one year ago. Devastated family and friends continue to mourn the presumed death of Kim Gillespie even though her body was never found. Falk is drawn into this mystery through his friends, who grew up with the woman and continue to hope for a resolution to the mystery.

The story moves back and forth from present to past as friends, family, and the authorities unravel the mystery of what happened to Kim Gillespie. There is also another, older mystery for Falk to delve into as he becomes closer to the townspeople. As I listened to the story I became drawn into both mysteries. I enjoyed getting to know the characters as Falk started to feel more at home in Marralee Valley and faced a possible crossroad in his life.

I do have to admit that I had a bit of a struggle at the beginning getting used to the Australian accent, but it was wonderful to listen to once I got into the rhythm of it!

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this excellent audiobook.