Beyond the Wild River

It is 1893 and Evelyn Ballantyre, who has had a restricted life growing up in the Scottish Borders, accompanies her wealthy father and a group of friends to Canada and on an expedition up the Nipigon River.
 
Evelyn is shocked when she discovers that their guide is James Douglas, who had been her friend when he worked for her father as a stable hand and who had vanished after the murder of a poacher. Evelyn always believed in his innocence and that her father has never told the truth about the event. Isolated in the wilds of Ontario and without the constraints of mannered society, the secret of what happened that night is finally revealed.
 
Initially, everything about this book captured me:- the lyrical title, atmospheric cover (Australian version) and plot summary. (It also helped that I grew up on tales of the Nipigon told by my father who had worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company in that area in the 1920s.) With so much going for it I anticipated a rewarding reading experience but most disappointed that this was not to be.

There are swathes of excellent writing here, including descriptions of Canada’s beautiful wild places and the burgeoning frontier towns like Port Arthur, but overall it is just too lethargic, let alone inspiring. Plus, whenever narrative lacks pace in a novel marketed as romantic adventure, including potentially boring subjects such as fishing and finance can just slow it down even more.

But the main issue is that I could not get sufficiently into the head of the vacuous Evelyn to even like her, let alone care about her, and the other characters, even the unjustly accused James, also seemed flat or elusive as well. To cap it off, there are also those annoying random flashbacks that are a particular bug-bear of mine and only work when the editing is tight. By mid-way, I started to skip read and the final mystery wasn’t all that surprising.

Much as I wanted to give it more I'm rather sad that, in all honesty, I can only give this three stars.

(With many thanks to Hachette Australia for the advance reading copy.)

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