3.5⭐

It’s been five years since Tony Reed fled Los Angeles, leaving behind a life of crime and his association with the Los Angeles McIntyre crime family headed by Boyd McIntyre. Tony was godfather to Boyd’s children – Kristen and her younger brother Ryan, who is hearing impaired. When Tony fled five years ago, he took the children with him to save them from the life that awaited them under the watchful eye of their paternal grandmother who holds the reins of their family's criminal enterprise. But Boyd has traced them to the small Montana town they have made a life for themselves as a family and will leave no stone unturned to bring his children back home and exact revenge on Tony.

Escaping Boyd and his goons won’t be easy this time. Boyd has connections and has used his money and connections for information on Tony. When the plane in which Tony, Kristen and Ryan are attempting to leave is shot down and Tony is injured it is up to Kristen and Ryan to tap into the skills Tony has taught them to survive the incoming blizzard and the danger of being found by Boyd and his men who are tracking them. Also tracking theme are Tony’s employer, rancher Nick Lorenzo and his son Jason who is a friend of Kristen’s, who are concerned for the kids and Ruby McIntyre, the kids’ aunt who severed ties with her family and joined the Army years ago and who was contacted by Nick when got wind of what was transpiring.

I loved the premise of North of Nowhere by Allison Brennan and the Montana setting. The plotting was on point and the characters were well drawn. However, the pacing suffers midway into the novel and I felt the journey to the end was a tad long-drawn with several characters who enter the fray. Overall, I enjoyed the dark and suspenseful vibe and especially liked the female characters – the good ones and otherwise - and the moose whose heroics in a crucial moment deserves a special mention! This was my first Allison Brennan novel and I would be interested in reading more of her work.

I paired my reading with the audiobook narrated by Eliza Foss, which did enrich the experience, though I felt that with so many characters, the audio experience would have been even better with more narrators.

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books, NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the digital review copy and the ALC. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Connect with me! ✏ Instagram ✏ My Blog ✏ The StoryGraph
( )

Well this was non-stop from page one! I absolutely love the ending and the journey to get there was harrowing. Plane crashes, snow storms, henchmen, and wildlife are all fighting to keep Kristen and Ryan on the run. I loved Kristen, she really finds her voice by the end of the story.
Eliza Floss did a great job narrating this story and I will look for more books narrated by Eliza in the future. ( )

How could they have found us after five years...we were well hidden.

Tony knew it was time to run when he saw two strangers at the bottom of his driveway.

Boyd had found them.

Boyd was the father of Kristen and Ryan.

Tony took them from him because of the business Boyd was in.

Tony didn't want them growing up in that family.

NORTH OF NOWHERE takes us on a chase to find Kristen and Ryan with both the good guys and the bad guys in pursuit.

A lot of obstacles get in everyone's way - specifically the snow storm.

Was Tony right in taking the children in the first place? Boyd doesn't think so.

Who will get to the children first?

Will everyone survive?

Lots of characters to keep straight in this thriller with quite a bit of violence and a book that took a few chapters to get me interested.

But...it is worth the read. 4/5

This book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review. ( )

North of Nowhere by Allison Brennan is a very highly recommended race-against-time survival thriller that is compulsively readable.

After five years hiding in Montana with father figure Tony Reed, Kristin (Kris) McIntyre, sixteen, and her ten-year-old deaf younger brother Ryan, have to run again immediately. Tony has spotted men looking for them, sent by their real father, Boyd McIntyre, head of a Los Angeles crime family. The trio barely escape in a plane, which was shot at by his men. Tony is mortally wounded and the plane is malfunctioning from the gun fire but he manages to land the plane up in the mountains. With a blizzard quickly approaching and Tony dying, Kris needs to use all her learned skills to save Ryan from the men looking for them. Kris is old enough to remember what and why they went into hiding from the McIntyre clan.

North of Nowhere is an extremely well-written, compelling, fast-paced thriller that is un-put-downable. You may have to suspend some disbelief, but with an action-packed plot, characters confronting danger at every turn, and no clear outcome it is a pleasure to keep reading. The chapters are short, which keeps the pace moving swiftly and are told through the point-of-view of different characters. This adds complexity to the already tension-filled plot and ensures the just-one-more-chapter response right to the end.

There is a large cast of characters in the novel, but I found it easy to keep them all straight as Brennan takes care to provide them all with some development. The main characters all are fully realized and feel like real people. You will care about many of the protagonists and wish them well. Some characters you will feel uncertain about for a time, while the antagonists, especially a couple of them, will draw your ire.

Allison Brennan has written another complex, exceptional thriller in North of Nowhere.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of St. Martin's Press via NetGalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2023/08/north-of-nowhere.html ( )

Kristen and Ryan McIntyre have been on the run, hiding from their murderous father for the past 5 years. Now, the day the young kids have dreaded has arrived. Boyd McIntyre has found them. The kids barely get away in a plane flown by the man who helped them escape five years ago. The plane is hit by gunfire and crashes in the middle of the Montana wilderness. Now the race is on to reach the kids before an incoming blizzard makes their situation hopeless.
Boyd's sister Ruby left the criminal McIntyre clan and joined the Army years ago. She helped engineer Kristen and Ryan's escape but cut off contact with them to avoid them being discovered. Now she drops everything to go and try to rescue them. Also looking for them is rancher Nick Lorenzo, who only knows them as a couple of sweet kids and can't figure out why they are running.

The race is on between Boyd, Ruby, and Nick to find the kids before the blizzard hits. But unknown to all of them, an even more dangerous threat is lurking. Life and death hang in the balance.

Allison Brennan throws all the balls she can find in the air and keeps you mesmerized as she juggles them from start to finish. The action starts on page one and doesn't let up until she leaves you breathless on the last page. The Montana wilderness comes to life, showing off its beauty and its danger. The threat comes from all sides as these kids are lost and scared in the wilderness, not knowing who to trust.

What makes this thriller really sing is the strong characters. Each of them has a connection to family which drives them. Brennan gives us flashbacks of these family lives and how it has shaped each of the characters. It doesn't matter if it's a criminal family or a salt-of-the-earth ranch family. There are bonds created that shape how these characters view each other and that have influenced their life choices.

This is a read-in-one-sitting type of book with relentless action and a sense of impending danger on every page. A must-read for thriller fans.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. ( )