Title: Leave No Trace
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟
I am thrilled to be taking part in the blog tour for Mindy Mejia's latest novel Leave No Trace, an atmospheric story of love and survival featuring an irresistible wilderness setting in rural Minnesota. For excerpts, author
interviews and more, make sure to stop by other blogs participating in this
blog tour (schedule attached).
Book Description:
There is a place in Minnesota with hundreds of miles of
glacial lakes and untouched forests called the Boundary Waters. Ten years ago a
man and his son trekked into this wilderness and never returned.
Search teams found their campsite ravaged by what looked like a bear. They were presumed dead until a decade later...the son appeared. Discovered while ransacking an outfitter store, he was violent and uncommunicative and sent to a psychiatric facility. Maya Stark, the assistant language therapist, is charged with making a connection with their high-profile patient. No matter how she tries, however, he refuses to answer questions about his father or the last ten years of his life
But Maya, who was abandoned by her own mother, has secrets, too. And as she’s drawn closer to this enigmatic boy who is no longer a boy, she’ll risk everything to reunite him with his father who has disappeared from the known world.
My musings:
To me, there is nothing more intriguing than a mystery with
a wilderness setting and a survival theme, and I can never resist when I
stumble across one! I loved that Leave No Trace was inspired by real families
who escaped civilisation to live in the wilderness, and Mindy Mejia’s
fascination with those real life characters shows in the way she presents
Josiah’s background and his motivations to live a life off the grid.
The atmospheric setting was my favourite part of the book
(ok, apart from the beautiful cover), and I devoured the descriptions of the
Minnesotan wilderness, picturing both Maya’s mother’s remote mountain cabin as
well as the life Lucas and Josiah must have led amongst the trees, surrounded
only by nature. I think I would have been a very happy reader indeed if the
whole story had revolved around Josiah and Lucas’ time in the mountains and the
way they managed to survive for 10 years – it was so fascinating and I wanted
more! Josiah’s chapters were by far my favourite parts of the book, his
character the most complex and complicated, his motivations the most intriguing
for this reader.
However, in Leave No Trace, Mejia tackles a lot more issues
than simply the desire to escape a conventional life, and she is not afraid to
offer us deeply flawed characters, many of whom have been touched by mental
illness or addiction. I particularly admired her astute portrayal of Josiah’s
landlady as she spiralled deeper and deeper into heroin addiction. In fact, all
of Mejia’s characters have had their share of adversity, which lends a deeper
meaning to their actions and choices.
Whilst I really appreciated the premise of the story, especially
the idea of a young man who returns into civilisation after years in the
wilderness, I admit I struggled a bit with both main characters, especially
Maya. At first glance, Maya is the perfect flawed but gutsy female protagonist
in the vein of others I have admired and enjoyed rooting for in the past. My
main issues however were – as usual – the suspension of disbelief as Maya
becomes emotionally attached to Lucas, who is one of her patients at the mental
health facility she is working at. Not only does her unprofessional attachment
raise some serious ethical and moral concerns, but I had trouble believing that
her role as speech therapist would allow her so much freedom with such a
troubled and potentially dangerous patient, some of which would not even be in
her scope of practice. Seeing that Maya had previously been hospitalised at the
same facility she is now working at, this behaviour would have raised many red
flags for me, and as a health professional myself I found it hard to understand
why no one stepped in to remove her from such a situation. I tried to envisage
some of the scenes between Maya and Lucas taking place in our hospital and
found them to be a bit far-fetched – however, I often struggle with details
that don’t seem to bother others, so the chances are that this may not be an
issue for the majority of readers.
What I did enjoy was Maya’s feelings of abandonment
surrounding her mother and her search for the truth regarding her mother’s
fate, which was beautifully and sensitively portrayed – as was the chance to
get to hear her mother’s point of view. Family relationships featured strongly
in this novel, none of them straightforward and simple, which added complexity.
Summary:
All in all, Leave No Trace was an intriguing mystery with a
wild and remote setting I could picture vividly. Whilst I struggled with some
details, these will most likely not bother most other readers who are not
afflicted with a chronic inability to suspend disbelief – to enjoy the journey,
I recommend going into this one with an open mind and enjoying the story
without getting hung up on details.
Thank
you to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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