One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner (Frankie Elkin #2) #BookReview #BlogTour @centurybooksuk

I’m delighted to share my thoughts on the latest book by Lisa Gardner ‘One Step Too Far‘ featuring missing person tracker Frankie Elkin. My thanks to the publisher Penguin Random House’s imprint Century for the invite for the blog tour and the digital ecopy via Netgalley. A heads up already, you won’t fail noticing that I’m quite enthusiastic about this novel 😉

A young man disappears during a stag weekend in the woods. Years later, he’s still missing.

But his friends who were with him that day are still searching for him. Still hunting for answers.

They hike deep into the wilderness.

With them is missing person specialist Frankie Elkin.

What they don’t know is that they are putting their own lives in terrifying danger, and may not come back alive . . .

Lisa Gardner started her writing career aged seventeen. Having caught her hair on fire while working in food service, crafting a novel seemed a safer bet. A mere ten years later she became an overnight success with the publication of her first thriller, The Perfect Husband.

Now an internationally bestselling author and winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for best suspense novel, Lisa lives in the mountains of New Hampshire with her family.

When not glued to her computer, she can be found hiking the mountains with her dogs and/or researching new and interesting ways to get away with murder.

Follow Lisa Gardner on Twitter @LisaGardnerBks ; or visit her website: https://www.lisagardner.com/

One Step Too Far is such an amazing novel! To say that I loved it is an understatement, it’s phe-nom-in-al! I was already itching to share the book love only 10 minutes after I finished reading it, so I’m excited it’s finally review day.

This is the second novel in a series about Frankie Elkin, a woman – not a detective, not a professional – who tries to find missing persons. A new location and new characters in every novel in the series, it’s a wonderful idea because you can read them as standalones but the characters of the first book in the series (bar owner Stoney, his terrorizing cat (still love him) and the special detective) were so great that I wished she’d stayed in town. That was before I read this novel. By the end of it, I had exactly the same feelings all over again, so many of the characters captured my heart, not to mention the dog, a lab called Daisy who’s a cadaver dog but can also find people alive.

Frankie is on her way to investigate the disappearance of an 8 year old but decides to make a little detour and join a search party for Timothy O’Day who went missing 5 years earlier. The party consists of 8 people (and a dog): a grieving father, a hiking guide, three college friends and three semi-professional searchers. They set out to an area in the massive Popo Agie Wilderness Area that consists of woods, mountains, streams, lakes, gullies, cliff faces, wild animals, you name it. Frankie is the one most out of her comfort zone but this city girl is determined, focused and absolutely amazing at what she does. When night falls on day 1 someone sabotages the group but who? I was hyperalert all through the novel but I honestly couldn’t say and after a while they all wormed their way into my heart.

I’d love to go over everything they went through up on that mountain but that would mean we’d need another hour. Suffice to say that there is lots of blood and wounds involved and yeah people will also get murdered. It’s like a version of The Hunger Games but better, so much better. The plot was so clever. I also had not a single idea how this was going to end.

I really enjoyed the first novel Before She Disappeared but in all honesty One Step Too Far is even better. If this doesn’t make it on my top 10 end of year list I don’t know what does! This character driven novel has wrung me out emotionally too. I nearly cried once, then smiled when it all came to a close, and in the very last pages I was emotional all over again. I think it’s easier to say it’s hormones then to explain to non-readers.

It can’t get any better than this if you ask me, but I can’t wait to follow Frankie again in the next novel and see what trouble finds her there!

I received a free ecopy of this novel from the publisher via Netgalley. This is my honest opinion.