The Survivors

This one pulled me in slowly, like the tide creeping up without me noticing. A man returns to his childhood home in Tasmania when his father’s dementia worsens. He and his wife and baby are shocked by a murder that happens during their stay. They’re also haunted by the events of a horrible storm years earlier.

There’s a lot to process. There’s so much grief and blame that has broken relationships. Harper manages to create a whodunnit without it ever feeling that way. There are possible suspects and red herrings, but it’s always about the characters. It reminds me so much of the BBC show Broadchurch. Harper has become a much-read author for me.

In one small Tasmanian beach town: three formerly teenage buddies, now grown men. Two older brothers, drowned. A famous author, a lying police chief. And two dead girls and one missing body, twelve years apart. The author, a genius at simultaneously unraveling clues and ratcheting up suspense, keeps her streak of four winners going in this gripping story of guilt and lies. The setting, with its dangerous underwater caves, is beautifully rendered. There's one tiny useless red herring, but Harper's reliable skills at creating a strong narrator and a population of memorable characters makes this the best of them all.

Quote: "I only take criticism from people I'd go to for advice."

In Jane Harper’s gripping novel, The Survivors, a young man returns to his hometown in coastal Tasmania and confronts his past. Evelyn Bay is a small place where everyone knows everybody else’s business. It is also a community that is slow to forget and forgive. After a long absence, 30-year-old Kieran Elliott has traveled to Evelyn Bay from Sydney with his young wife Mia and infant daughter Audrey to help his mother, Verity, pack up the family home. Kieran’s father, Brian, suffers from dementia, and Verity is reluctantly placing him in a care facility. But Verity’s plan is hobbled by a tragic past and long-simmering resentments. Twelve years earlier Kieran’s older brother Finn was killed in a marine accident during a freak show more storm. At the time the storm hit, eighteen-year-old Kieran was on the beach. The beach was swamped, and a friend placed a call for help. Finn and his partner answered the call, but their boat flipped in the chaotic storm-driven waves and they both drowned. Kieran survived, but the family was left reeling and traumatized. For twelve years Kieran has held himself responsible for Finn’s death and Verity has retained mementos of Finn’s life. Also lost that day was Gabby Birch, fourteen, Mia’s best friend, whose body was never recovered but whose backpack appeared on the beach a few days after the storm, raising suspicions that she was not washed out to sea, that something else happened to her. Then, while Kieran and Mia are in town, the body of a young art student, Bronte Laidler, who was spending the summer waitressing at a local bar, is discovered on the beach. The police determine that Bronte was murdered. But who would do such a thing? And why? Bronte was unassuming and well liked by everyone who’d met her. Sergeant Chris Renn, who twelve years earlier led the inquiry into Gabby’s disappearance, leads the investigation into Bronte’s murder. With more than enough suspicion to go around, the investigation uncovers an abundance of clues and leads, which, frustratingly, go nowhere. Harper’s novel is an engaging blend of character-based drama and plot-driven action. The residents of Evelyn Bay are thoughtfully conceived and poignantly depicted, their grudges, dilemmas and ambitions convincingly of the world with which all of us are familiar. Harper’s writing is richly detailed and makes Evelyn Bay a vibrant and essential presence in the story. Kieran, who is supposed to be helping his mother, is constantly distracted by his fragmentary memories of the storm and its aftermath, and his role in Finn’s death. As the days pass and the mystery of Bronte Laidler’s murder deepens, his thoughts and observations lead him to some unwelcome conclusions. Jane Harper has carved out a niche for herself as a supremely gifted and conscientious writer of suspense fiction. Her novels tend to burn slowly. But the end, when it comes, is always immensely satisfying. show less

Two stars for the beautiful night beach cover. For the first fifty pages, this book was a pleasant way to pass the time. The blurb made the book seem a lot more interesting than it wound up being. The cover of the copy I read was -enchanting-. I put the book on my TBR originally, just for it. Beach covers are fantastic, and what a wonderful image of a beach at night! I opened up the book, read the flap, and settled in...to what turned out to be a paint-by-the-numbers, nothing new, whodunit. An interesting difference to me, an American, was that the story takes place in Australia. So does one of my favorite books, "Seven Types of Ambiguity" by Elliot Perlman. The two books are wildly different, though. Harper writes small towns well show more here, and the dynamics between everyone were wonderfully tense. I was more focused on that than the boring drowning of someone who was not a local. But that was the plot. I recognized the red herrings fairly quickly and was annoyed. There's plot contrivances instead of actual plot, especially starting midway through the novel. Keiran conveniently overhears several pages of conversation that drive the plot. Ugh.

The book would have been so much more interesting had it been told from Olivia's POV: sister to the original missing girl, Gabby. Knows Mia, the former BFF of Gabby and current girlfriend of Keiran. Slept with Keiran years ago, and it's never really mentioned how she feels about the death of Keiran's brother and a friend, to which her actions are seen as directly linked. But no, readers are stuck with Keiran, and in third person limited, past tense to boot! How limiting! The title of the novel is pointless. It's three statues on the shore that are decorative storm warnings; I kid you not. Nothing to do with the plot or characters. The ending was abrupt and unsatisfying. The book needed to be a hundred pages shorter. There was no narrative or plot-related reason for Keiran's dad to have dementia, or even be in the book at all. Keiran forgives his mother for screaming something awful, which, wow. There were a ton of unfortunate implications near the end. There was also a lot of purple prose. Bland characters became one-dimensional villains. It was aggravating to read through! show less

The locals have never forgotten the tragedy that most people believe was Kiernan’s fault because he shouldn't have been in the caves when the storm surged.

Kiernan had been with his girlfriend in the caves, and Kiernan was blamed for the the death of his brother and the father of seven-year-old Liam for risking their lives to save him. A local teenager also disappeared during the storm.

Just what was the intrigue of those caves?

Twelve years later Kiernan has come back to Evelyn Bay to help his parents pack up their house because his father has dementia and needs to be in a home.

A few days after Kiernan and his family arrive, tragedy strikes again on the same beach.

Will this current investigation be more thorough than the one many show more years ago that never did solve the disappearance of the local teenager?

Will it bring up things that were kept hidden?

Will this new tragedy bring the guilt and regret back to the surface and have everyone reliving the first tragedy?

THE SURVIVORS took a bit to connect with, but once you figured out who was who, what the town and the people who lived there were going through, and the magnitude of the first tragedy, the tension ramped up.

There were a lot of characters and quite a few that could have been the person who was responsible for the second death on the beach. Ms. Harper kept that a well-hidden secret.

I had a few people in mind, but was kept guessing until the end.

This was my first book by Ms. Harper, and she definitely keeps your interest with the subtle hints about the characters and who the responsible person could be as well as where the story line is going.

Her descriptive writing pulled you right into every place the characters were and into every situation.

I enjoyed trying to figure out the undertone of the town as well as the mystery.

THE SURVIVORS is a haunting mystery with revelations you won't see coming. 4/5

This book was given to me by BookBrowse and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less

Jane Harper, who has taken her readers on a crime fiction tour of Australia, takes us to a small coastal town in Tasmania, a place where a ship once sank, taking over fifty people with it. The wreck remains a destination for divers, and a sculpture of three figures that stand above the waves, known as “The Survivors,” is both a memorial and a constant reminder that the sea, which gives the tourist town its livelihood, is both beautiful and cruel.

Kerian Elliot has returned to Evelyn Bay with his girlfriend and infant daughter to help his mother pack up the house he grew up in. His father’s dementia has gotten so severe she can no longer care for him. Kerian rarely visits and is shocked by how advanced his father’s condition has show more become. Visits have always been fraught, given the shadow hanging over the family. Kerian’s popular older brother drowned in a ferocious storm a dozen years earlier. Kerian is dogged by guilt about the drowning, and the attitude of townsfolk doesn’t help. They blame him for the death of three young men who set out to sea trying to rescue him from a storm-engulfed sea cave before the storm swamped their boat. Both Kerian and his wife Mia survived the storm, but each lost someone close to them: Kerian’s brother Finn and Mia’s friend Gabby, who disappeared on the beach, but whose body was never found.

The packing isn’t going well – the baby is making sleep elusive and the father’s confused efforts to help just make things harder. Then the body of a young artist is found on the beach, and the rumors of the past return to swirl around the investigation.

Harper takes her time developing the story, unfolding the close relationships that knit the town together, relationships that are becoming unraveled as the police struggle to solve the murder with few clues. A popular novelist who knows the town from summer visits has moved in permanently and has launched an investigation of his own. Everyone has a suspect, and Kerian is increasingly feeling the weight of his guilt bearing down.

The deliberate pacing gives Harper time to develop rich characters and fill in the town’s past, bit by bit. Always interested in the distinctive landscapes of her setting, Harper makes the people who live in the small town part of the landscape, people shaped by the sea and by their relative isolation, which means everyone has ties to each other, ties that are increasingly strained as the investigation drags on without a breakthrough. Though it wouldn’t be accurate to call this novel a thriller, it’s a compelling and deep examination of themes Harper has explored before: the long term scars of the past in small community, the tensions in families who have suffered a loss, and the corrosive effect that blame and guilt have on survivors of tragedy. show less

The central theme of The Survivors is guilt. Kieran Elliott has been living with it for twelve long years, knowing that his decision to ignore the weather cost the lives of his brother and his brother's best friend, both very popular young men in their small village. No one's come right out and said so, but Kieran knows they all believe he's the one to blame. When a young artist from Canberra is found dead on the beach, the stage is set for readers to find out exactly what happened to her and what happened on that fateful day of the storm. The village was hard hit because not only did two young men die, but a young girl went missing as well, and instead of digging for the truth, it seems they all banded together in silence to ease show more everyone's pain. Well... that didn't work very well, did it?

Jane Harper does some interesting things with this story. It's the first time I remember reading a book that involves a young father who spends a lot of time carrying his baby daughter strapped to his chest while he's conducting an impromptu investigation, and that one detail tells readers a lot about his character.

The Survivors also shows the corrosive power of guilt. Kieran isn't the only one feeling guilt over what happened over a decade ago, and each person has reacted to it in different ways. Although the resolution of the tale took me by surprise, it shouldn't have; Harper planted clues all along the way.

There is a lot to like about The Survivors, and I am a huge Jane Harper fan, but I just couldn't warm up to this book like I did the others. I found it hard to connect to the characters, and the plot didn't engage me until the artist's death made Kieran wonder if there were ties between it and what happened twelve years ago. No, it's not quite up to her others like The Lost Man, but even Hank Aaron didn't hit it out of the park every time he swung the bat. I look forward to her next book with great anticipation.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley) show less