This book was a fun read! 4 best friends head out on an adventure to climb a mountain in Norway. Bad weather ensues secrets are revealed….now they are being followed…..4 friends enter the wilderness but will they all return from it?
What an adventure! I kept putting myself in their shoes and I’m pretty sure I would have become ant food!!

Thank you to @netgalley and @putnambooks for letting me read an early copy of this one!
384 pages
Pub date 8/29/23
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 3.5/5

#netgalley #netgalleyreviewer #putnambooks #kindle #kindlepaperwhite #bookrecommendations #bookreviewer #bookreviews

3.5/5⭐️

Solid thriller with an eerie Nordic atmosphere. I’m a big fan of a multiple POV mystery/thrillers so I knew this would be up my alley. It was actually pretty twisty toward the end which kept it interesting. Overall, I wasn’t really attached to any of the characters and found each of them to be slightly irritating/immature especially for how old they were. Despite this, I enjoyed the pacing and the overall plot line. I’ll definitely continue to pick up this author’s new releases!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you for the copy of The Hike by Lucy Clarke. I really enjoyed this thriller! She provides 7-8 characters to keep your eye on. 4 best friends decide to travel to Norway to hike some trails and mountains. What they don’t know is that there is a murderer close behind them, watching their every step. I think that she did a great job keeping it easy to follow. The reader can keep track of the four women, but still could read it in one sitting or over a weekend. I would recommend this to others who enjoy fast-paced thrillers!

Thanks again.

Jaclyn Brill./ @brillsbooks (instagram)

The Hike Review!

Thank you so much Penguin Group Putnam and Netgalley for this gifted E-read in exchange for an honest review. The Hike is out August 29, 2023!!

I am always going to love books about friends getting away together, especially when they get away outside. I thought this was a perfect summer read and it made me really want to go on a hike. 😄 The Hike was a 4/5 ⭐️ for me! The characters in this one were all so unique and had a lot of problems that were all drastically different. I couldn’t relate to any of them, but I did love reading about them! I loved the setting and it was a very steady paced book. This probably had to do with the beautifully short chapters and the switching of povs. It was a wild ride, but it fell a little short for me at the end! Definitely recommend if you like suspenseful books about friendship and the outdoors!

One of my favorite things in books is reading about extreme sports (mountain climbing, scuba diving, wilderness camping, etc) that I am definitely never going to try. And if there's a mystery or thriller element involved, EVEN BETTER. This book is for the most part about hiking and the interpersonal relationships of a female friend group, but it does get thrilling and I was very into it. It is a great quick read/vacation book, and I would definitely recommend.

But this would not be a sincere review if I didn't mention that this book has one of my personal most infuriating tropes in media--the Established Childfree Character that...~*changes their mind*~. I hate this nonsense. There is very little representation of childfree characters (particularly women), and if you don't want to write about one because that is outside of your experience, that's fine, but books like this are constantly furthering the narrative that adults who don't want children will all magically "mature" and change their minds. It's insulting and unnecessary--there are plenty of other ways to add in an unplanned pregnancy.

So yeah, the book is good, but it happens to contain one of my largest personal pet peeves (second only to unnecessary animal death--fortunately not present in this book).

8/10

ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley (The book is out in the UK but not in the US yet)

The Hike was great. The story was good, but what really made it stand out was the excellent characters. Each of the four main characters that the book follows through their own POV chapters feels real, but also completely unique from one another. The friendship that unites them also feels deep and complex like a real world friendship would. Throughout the story suspense is built up and you are constantly left wondering when the other shoe is going to drop, and then it does.

The Hike had me hooked from the first chapter. It sunk it's literary claws into me and I finished it in one sitting. Four friends take a yearly trip to escape their lives (some better than others) and reconnect. For the trip, they skip beaches and relaxation and take a hiking trip in Norway. None of the women are experienced climbers and quickly realize how ill equipped they are for their adventure. Writing the summary of this title lessens how smooth the fall into complete chaos is. There's fractured friendships, cheating husbands, creepy locals, drug smuggling and more. It sounds ridiculous, but fits together really well in an engaging and exciting title that is a great escape for an afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and started reading more Lucy Clarke books because of this title.

I read the description of this book and I knew right away it was right up my alley- and boy was I right!

This was not a disappointing twisty mystery- it had me holding onto my seat until the end!

This was my first Lucy Clarke book but it won’t be my last! This one was full of suspense and each time I thought I had figured it out it moved in another direction. I am not a fan of books that are left on a cliffhanger (no pun intended) so I appreciated the nice bow this one was tied up with at the end.

I was initially drawn to The Hike because I am a huge fan of Scandi Crime and this is a story about a group of friends who decide to go on a hiking trip in Norway. I thought it would be a good mix of a more domestic thriller with the Nordic setting that I love. Norway (and the hike itself) doesn't really feature that much in the story, it actually was much more of a character study - looking at each of the four main characters and the issues they were dealing with in their lives and how this was having an affect on their friendship. I thought it was an enjoyable read and it kept my attention the whole way through but I didn't think there was enough of the 'thriller' aspect for me personally. There were a few scenes at the end where it started to get a bit more exciting but I would have liked a lot more tension. The thing I did enjoy was the two strands of the story running parallel - the first following the group on their hike and the second following the rescue mission. I thought the way this was put together worked really well and kept me guessing about how things were going to turn out. A great choice if you are looking for a fast-paced but slightly lighter mystery thriller.

While I wanted to love The Hike, I kept waiting for something more. It wasn’t that the writing was bad. The characters were well developed. The plot was good, and yet…something was just missing. I’m not sure what. It was more of a chore to read this than an experience. I do believe a lot of people will love this. It is deeply atmospheric with strong female leads, but it missed the mark for me.

This was a solid thriller with an unexpected ending. 4 stars. Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for the ARC!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was not what I expected it to be. I was hoping for it to be darker but it was still a great book! A group of friends independently going through their own issues take their annual trip where things do not go to plan. This was a fast paced story that left you questioning what would happen next! I would recommend this if you are looking for thriller that won’t keep you up at night.

I really liked this new book from Lucy Clarke. While it has plenty of mystery and suspense, it is also a study on friendships and personal relationships. It is tightly plotted, and every detail is crucial to the story and ending. I will recommend this book to all of my suspense loving friends. #netgalley #thehike #Penguin

I was excited to get the chance to read this book early thanks to NetGalley! I just read One of the Girls recently and absolutely loved it.

This book was interesting to me as well as a good read. I don’t want to say spoilers, but from the beginning I knew one of the twists was going to happen. I just didn’t know which friend was going to betray the other. I liked each of the characters reasoning for needing the hike.

This book was very disappointing to me - I was hoping for a much more engaging plot since I've heard good things about Lucy Clarke's writing, but I thought the plot was so boring. There's actually another book with the same title - THE HIKE - by Susi Holliday, that I read last fall, and Clarke's plot was relatively similar (and equally un-engaging). I did like the Norwegian setting, but I thought the plot was really slow and the characters were overall dumb. They continually made horrible decisions and the ending didn't strike me as twisty or engaging. I wouldn't classify this book as a thriller. I also thought the plot line about drugs was unnecessary. 2 stars.

I initially was thinking of giving this book a 4 or 5 stars when I first started reading it. The book started off incredibly promising. I thought the premise and characters were interesting. The pros: The writing is good, the pacing is good, the plot development is good, it keeps the suspense going throughout and you are never bored while reading it.

The cons...SPOILERS AHEAD:

As a mother myself, it was completely unbelievable to think that 2 mothers with young children would embark on a very dangerous hike without a guide..and none of them were really that experienced either. The amount of times they were in life threatening situations where they almost died was almost comical in relation to the fact that they left young children at home and were so willing to risk their lives just to hike a mountain and leave their kids, potentially without a mother.

The whole drug ring plot was totally unoriginal. I thought it would have been better without the drug plot and the "super villain" leading the drug ring.

Finally---what really made me give this 3 stars (and I almost considered 2 stars for this reason) was the internalized misogyny, which the more I think about, makes me feel gross. While reading it, I noticed 2 of the 4 characters were mothers and one discovers she is pregnant while on the trip. The 4th character is a drug addicted rock star who is aimless and has no real purpose for her existence, so she does stupid things to hide her unhappiness. I was hoping she wouldn't be killed off but had a sinking feeling she would because misogyny tells us the "disposable" character is the childless one. And sure enough, in Joni's final scenes, she sacrifices herself for the other 3 because they have something to live for (their children). The message here is that women are worthless and on the chopping block if they are childless, and purposeless without a child. In fact, the one woman who is pregnant ends up having her child and then all of the sudden her life has meaning and purpose again. I find motherhood rewarding and amazing and still found these tropes offensive.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins for the ARC of Lucy Clarke’s newest thriller!
In The Hike, a group of friends set out for their annual vacation together, but this time they’re trading poolside margaritas for something a bit more rugged —- a four day strenuous hike in the mountains of Norway.
It was a little bit of a slow start, as the reader had to get to know the four characters individually, but once they set off on their hike, the story quickly turned in to an entertaining survivalist thriller. Would recommend for fans of Lucy Clarke and for anyone looking for an easy adventure read!

One of the best books I've read this year! I couldn't put this book down and was hooked from the start! I'd recommend this to everyone because it's that great of a book. 5 star in every way! Ah the suspense and mystery of this book was at an all time high, my heart was pounding so much while reading!

3.75. Good read! I thought the author did a great job with character development and descriptions. Felt like I could picture where they were perfectly. Loved the plot twists as well. Only thing that was hard for me was the multiple POV and storylines. But overall good read and will recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this ARC!