Forty two year old Valerie Gillis has gone missing in the Maine woods in the Appalachian Trail. Beverly, the Maine State Game Warden, leads the search. Meanwhile, Lena, a 76 year old bird watcher in Connecticut, is doing a little online sleuthing with her mysterious internet friend. As the search drags on with no progress the situation becomes more dire. Will they find Valerie alive? How did she get lost?

Heartwood can be described as a literary wilderness suspense novel. We get chapters from the perspectives of Valerie via poetic letters to her mother, Beverly, and Lena. Interviews, witness statements, and other news excerpts are included as well. This helps the reader move fast through the narrative.

The descriptions of the Maine wilderness and the Appalachian Trail are done really well. Those parts are immersive and interesting.as are the details of how the search is organized and undertaken. Valerie's letters add a vagueness to her situation. Not only does the reader wonder what has happened or how she ended up in the situation but also the potential outcome. Valerie's state of mind is the focus.

Heartwood is not a traditional suspense novel but you will hold your breath along with everyone who is doing their best to bring her home. There are parts where the suspense is overshadowed though as we get insights into Beverly and Lena's personal relationships with family. It is an overall theme for the novel. I did find it a bit much after a while and some parts of that are confusing as they're written in a poetically vague way. I also found the poetic style from Valerie's letters to extend to the other characters inner thoughts when they previously hadn't been written that way.

I wanted to question some things about Valerie's actions during her disappearance but that's probably for a different kind of novel. Things are laid out for multiple theories but it's not enough. I question why they are mentioned as Valerie's letters do a good enough job on their own.

I breezed through Heartwood. I love the setting and the story is written in a way to make you care about finding Valerie. I think many readers will enjoy this literary novel.

3.5 stars

Thank you @simonandschuster #partner for the ecopy of this book!

I have been on an Appalachian Trail kick lately and this one was the exact vibe I was hoping for! In this book there is a hiker that goes missing only a short 200 miles from the end. Everyone knows that people that hike that trail are searching for something within themselves and have to dig deep to get it done. Valerie is no different. She writes letters to her mom along the way so the reader gets glimpses into her mindset during her hike. In addition there is another POV from an armchair investigator (an older birdwatcher) that comes up with her own theories of Valerie’s disappearance. It seems like there are definitely some more sinister things at play and it’s a race against time to find her before it’s too late!

I love books about hiking, being in the woods, and missing people so this book had immediately sucked me in from the get go. The mystery and allure behind the Appalachian Trail gets me every time. I truly was intrigued thinking about all the different characters one would meet on the trail like Valerie did. I know a lot of people do this hike alone, but being a solo female like Valerie really added to the creepiness of this story! The setting was definitely a vibe of its own. I personally loved it! I wouldn’t consider this book a thriller, it’s definitely more of a suspenseful mystery. In the end, I thought it was very satisfying how this story came together and of course need to go buy a copy because I am obsessed with this cover!

This started off so well. I love an epistolary book; add in solitary survival and you've got a winner. But around the 2/3 mark this got really boring. Lena's chapters got longer and she was the least interesting character. Lena was the weak link of the story. Otherwise, Gaige's writing is very good and mostly engaging. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC

Very suspenseful read. Valerie disappears from the Appalachian Trail while on the last few hundred miles of her journey. The usual questions: where did she go? Did something happen to her? An all out manhunt ensues. There were a few sections of the book that dragged for me, but the suspense kept me going. The ending was not as I had expected. At all.
Thank you @Netgalley and @Simon&Schuster for the opportunity to read this ARC review.

I struggled with this novel. The split narrative made it harder to connect to the characters. The characters never developed, and I was left unsatisfied with some of the fascbook's parts. Missing persons and mysteries are usuallyinating to me. I loved the idea of the Amissing Appalachian Trailhiker. Someone else will love and appreciate this book in a way I ccan't

This bored me, but that is, I think, mostly a me problem, not a book problem. Survival stories aren’t my thing, mostly. The split narratives here also didn’t work for me: I never got enough of the characters; they all felt wooden.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

A beautiful, page turning, wilderness suspense mystery. Valerie is a nurse drained from working during Covid and needs a break from her life and decides to hike the Appalachian Trail. She goes missing and Lt Bev is the warden in Maine whose job it is to find her. Chapters alternate between Lt. Bev and the search progress and investigation and letters that Valerie writes in her journal to her mother that updates you on what’s happened to her in the days she’s gone missing. We also meet Lena who is a woman in an assisted living who is estranged from her daughter and who is engaged in online discussions with a man about the case. The writing especially the nature writing is beautiful. There are so many layers to each character that get explored and how the author weaves all of the story lines together at the end is amazing. I couldn’t stop turning pages to see what happened to Valerie and find out if she would be found. I loved this one!

This is a compelling mystery that brings readers deep into the woods of Maine. The narrative shifts compellingly between a lost hiker, the game warden trying to find her, and an elderly woman untangling her own past. It moves at a good pace.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

4.75 out of 5 stars

My goodness. This book had me on all fronts - my fascination with the Appalachian Trail, my history in Maine, my deep love of forests and nature, and mother-daughter relationships.

We get to know Valerie, an AT hiker who went missing in the North Woods, through letters she writes to her mother. Lieutenant Bev with the Maine Warden Service, is nearing the end of her bittersweet career - one where she started as one of two women in the Maine Warden Service, one where many people thought she could not - and she has a lot of missing hiker searches under her belt. She is certain they'll find Valerie quickly.

There are update posts from the Wardens with information about Valerie, as well as a plea for anyone who might know anything to reach out to the tip line.

There are excerpts of Warden Cody Ouellette interviewing Valerie's trail bestie/brother, Santo, who had to leave the hike early for a family emergency.

There are tips from the tip line about how people like to insert themselves into investigations to air their bigotries and conspiracy theories, which they think are helpful but only take up space.

Then you have Lena - a seventy-six-year-old loner in a wheelchair who resides at Cedarfield - an assisted living facility in Connecticut who spends her days foraging, despairing her admirer, Warren, and talking online to a man she knows only as /u/TerribleSilence, who lives in Bethel, Maine, and is a fellow forager.

She learns of the missing hiker through /u/TerribleSilence, and for a terrifying moment, she thinks it could be her estranged daughter, Christine. She soon learns the name of the missing hiker, though. Still, she's already made an emotional connection and investment in the investigation, and she hounds /u/TerribleSilence for details, as he says he might go join the search party.

There are some real gems of quotes in this book, and there are other sentences that felt like the author was trying to create some deep, philosophical quotes but didn't quite hit the mark. However, the emotional connections that the characters make with each other is quite intense. Santo and Cody end up close enough that when Santo is going through a tough phase while a lot of people blame him for Valerie's disappearance, he reaches out to Cody outside of interviews. There are moments that I cried for Santo, and parts where his conversations with Cody had me laughing out loud.

Then there is the juxtaposition of Valerie's view of her mother, Janet, and Lena's account of her always-strained relationship with her daughter, Christine. I am reminded of a quote from the original The Crow movie: "Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."

(Okay, okay... this is actually from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery, but I've never read that, so...)

Valerie seems to have two views of her mother in her mind: the awe, love, and obsession a child has for their mother, and the adult understanding that her mother is human. Her deep, precious love for her mother comes through in the letters she writes as she wonders if she is ever going to be rescued.

Lena, meanwhile, looks back on how her own personality might not have been setup for motherhood, but she loved her daughter. She just didn't know how to "mother." She was a scientist, and when her husband died, she went deeper into an analytical job of mothering - keeping track of Christine's every growth. When Christina runs off with a man five years her senior when she was 18, she tells her mother that her love is poison.

My heart broke for Lena because we can only be who we can be, even as parents, and we are human, and all the things we think we're doing right might be wrong and all the things we think would be wrong might end up having been what the child needed. Oh, how I cried.

These two sides of motherhood is further dissected and compared against Lt. Bev's decision to not marry and have kids, and her memories of her own mother, who has dementia, compared to the memories her two younger sisters have of their mother.

I could not put this book down. It is not often that I start a book when I am in bed for the night and then tear through a third of it before forcing myself to turn off the Kindle and get some damn sleep. Then I had homework to do the next day and if homework were personified, I would have given it some serious side-eye and judgmental faces for taking me away from the book.

Awww. My biggest issue with this book is that I am not going to get more of Lt. Bev and the crew in more mysteries. This was such a great book.

This work follows three women, and I enjoyed each of their POVs equally. There were times when I felt like Lena's POV was a little too detailed, and I do think the work would have been stronger if her sections were trimmed down. It also includes first person excerpts written as letters, search updates posted online by authorities, transcripts of interviews, team assignment summaries, tip emails, and more. I really liked this multimedia approach as it added a well-rounded feel to the work and avoided info-dumping. It also allowed the release of information at a balanced speed to keep the work moving forward.

While a mystery is at the center of this work, there's not much tension relating to it until near the end. While folks looking for a more intense read may not prefer this, I enjoyed the slower, more character-driven feel of this one. The author also incorporated the setting wonderfully, and I enjoyed learning plenty about the hiking culture surrounding the Appalachian Trail.

If you're looking for a quieter, character-driven mystery with older protagonists, then you'll probably enjoy this one. My thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for allowing me to read this work, which will be published April 1, 2025. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Clever, suspenseful, with well-developed characters. Recommended.



Review copy provided by publisher.

Extremely engaging, enjoyable read. Some personal aspects of individual characters were over-dramatized to the point of unrealistic, in the midst of a very realistic, dramatic story. Other than those shortcomings, this was a fun read and will be strongly recommended to a wide audience.

A terrific read! The setting for the novel was certainly different. The Maine woods and the wardens who patrol them were a fresh topic for me as well, as I expect it will be for other readers. The slightly deranged young man who disturbs Valerie as she treks the Applachian Trail was an imagination stretch for me and not well received. The alternate storyline of the elder woman in the independent living facility added an uneeded subplot. I felt it was extraneous. Glad i was approved to read it as I am always eager to read an original novel.

HEARTWOOD ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. When nurse Valerie, becomes lost on the Appalachian Trail, searching for her becomes a tough mission, with limited clues and limited supplies. This book was just way too slow for me. Nothing kept me on the edge of my seat, and I felt nothing happened til 75-80% through. That being said, I liked the writing and characters. I just felt kinda bored? Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Publication date: 04/01/2025

This is a Wilderness survival story literary fiction novel and I loved it! My favorite trope, fiction and nonfiction, is any outdoorsy/wilderness story. This novel follows the viewpoint of three women. First, we have Valerie, who was hiking the Appalachian trail in Maine, when she disappeared. The reader knows what happened to her through journal entries as letters to her mom. The second character is Lieutenant Beverly of the Maine Warden Service, who is in charge of the search and rescue of Valerie. Thirdly we have Lena, who is a retired woman who acts as an armchair detective trying to help find Valerie through the internet. This book is adventurous, tense and emotional with a medium pace. I personally think it is a mix of plot and character. I hope whoever reads my review picks up this book because I really enjoyed it and I recommend it if you like outdoorsy stories.

This was a wild ride!
Set on the Appalachian trail a woman is lost and descends a little bit into madness. I wasn’t quite sure how all the characters intertwined, but I was riveted and felt the emotions of Beverly so vividly. Well written and executed, I could not put this one down.

4.5⭐️/A-

Whoa. This book was absolutely stunning! It’s like stepping into the Maine wilderness—haunting, beautiful, and full of secrets. The kind of story that grips you and doesn’t let go.

Valerie’s letters to her mother? Heartbreaking. You can feel her exhaustion, her fear, her will to survive. Meanwhile, Beverly is out there leading the search, balancing duty and personal struggles, and Lena? Unexpectedly delightful as she pieces things together from a retirement home. Every POV added depth, making the mystery even more compelling.

It’s not just about what happened to Valerie—it’s about resilience, connection, and the ways we find (or lose) ourselves. A slow burn in the best way, with tension building toward an ending that delivers. Highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

This is a bit above a 3, because there is some beautiful writing going on here, but ultimately, the story just dragged too much for me to rate it higher. The story is told from three different perspectives: Valerie, the lost hiker; Lt. Beverly, the warden leading the search for Valerie; and Lena, a wheelchair-bound retiree who's connection to the others only becomes clear later. Really, each of these sections reads more like a character study than anything else. Valerie's sections are written in the form of letters to her mother that she writes while lost, the other two are told more traditionally, with a few snippets of news reports, interviews, and tipline calls related to the case mixed in here and there.

Initially, the story moves along well, and I enjoyed learning about the backgrounds of the characters. Gaige writes well, and some of the Valerie sections are downright poetic. That said, for a relatively short book, the story felt like it was spinning its wheels for quite a while in the middle. I realize that matches the plot of the story - the investigation is spinning its wheels, and therefore, so does the story - but it went on long enough without any new developments that I began to lose interest. Lena's sections, in particular, sometimes felt as if they were coming from an entirely different book. Obviously, you know she must eventually connect to the main storyline at some point, but it takes so long for her to do so that, unfortunately, a lot of her storyline wound up feeling tangential.

In the end, this was worth reading, but only if you're going in with the expectations that it will be a more slow-paced, literary read.

This story sucked me right in and I read it in one day. I really enjoyed the details about hiking the Appalachian Trail, the friendships formed and the heart it takes to make it thru. The characters were great - the missing hiker, the friend she'd been hiking with, the leader of the search and rescue team and the armchair detective. All different viewpoints who added greatly to the story.

This was a very interesting slow burn novel that had a multitude of different POV‘s and definitely keeps you on your toes when you’re trying to figure out what’s going on! I love the different POV‘s because they switched relatively seamlessly between each other and let you have those reflective moments in different character Perspectives.

I love the fact that it was set in the Appalachian mountains because I’m a big fan of mysteries/horror/suspense novels that are set in this area because of the lore behind it!

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this one and it is a good novel if you’re looking for something to curl up without a cold day and be enthralled with the suspense within the storyline!

4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️