Title: INTO THE JUNGLE
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
Lily Bushwold thought she’d found the antidote to endless
foster care and group homes: a teaching job in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As soon as
she could steal enough cash for the plane, she was on it.
When the gig falls through and Lily stays in Bolivia, she finds bonding with other broke, rudderless girls at the local hostel isn’t the life she wants either. Tired of hustling and already world-weary, crazy love finds her in the form she least expected: Omar, a savvy, handsome local man who’d abandoned his life as a hunter in Ayachero—a remote jungle village—to try his hand at city life.
When Omar learns that a jaguar has killed his four-year-old nephew in Ayachero, he gives Lily a choice: Stay alone in the unforgiving city, or travel to the last in a string of ever-more-isolated river towns in the jungles of Bolivia. Thirty-foot anaconda? Puppy-sized spiders? Vengeful shamans with unspeakable powers? Love-struck Lily is oblivious. She follows Omar to this ruthless new world of lawless poachers, bullheaded missionaries, and desperate indigenous tribes driven to the brink of extinction. To survive, Lily must navigate the jungle--its wonders as well as its terrors—using only her wits and resilience.
When the gig falls through and Lily stays in Bolivia, she finds bonding with other broke, rudderless girls at the local hostel isn’t the life she wants either. Tired of hustling and already world-weary, crazy love finds her in the form she least expected: Omar, a savvy, handsome local man who’d abandoned his life as a hunter in Ayachero—a remote jungle village—to try his hand at city life.
When Omar learns that a jaguar has killed his four-year-old nephew in Ayachero, he gives Lily a choice: Stay alone in the unforgiving city, or travel to the last in a string of ever-more-isolated river towns in the jungles of Bolivia. Thirty-foot anaconda? Puppy-sized spiders? Vengeful shamans with unspeakable powers? Love-struck Lily is oblivious. She follows Omar to this ruthless new world of lawless poachers, bullheaded missionaries, and desperate indigenous tribes driven to the brink of extinction. To survive, Lily must navigate the jungle--its wonders as well as its terrors—using only her wits and resilience.
My musings:
Oh how I wish there were more writers like Erica Ferencik out
there! Fast paced and addictive adventure & survival thrillers featuring
wild and remote places and plucky women protagonists are so hard to come by,
and Ferencik has really perfected the art. I loved THE RIVER AT NIGHT, and
although this one was completely different, I devoured it just as
greedily.
I was intrigued to read that the author loosely based this
story on a real-life account of one of her friend’s experiences living in the
Amazon jungle. It really added depth and meaning to the story and made the
character of Lily come even more to life for me. Lily was a wonderful character
– as an orphan growing up in the foster home system, she is both troubled as
well as tough. She is a survivor who will fight to the very end. She is feisty
and driven, and made for the perfect lead role in this story of survival
against the odds. I loved her gradual coming of age as she forms relationships
and matures into a woman and wife, embracing her new life’s challenges. She
definitely is a character you cannot help but root for all the way.
And that setting – have I said that I looooove wild and
remote settings? Only a 100 times or so? Well, let me say it again. It doesn’t
get much better than this: a small village in the middle of the jungle cut off
from civilisation and surrounded by a harsh and hostile environment. There was
wildlife galore, including some of your worst nightmares, like giant snakes and
hairy spiders as big as dinner plates, man-eating jaguars, poison ants, razor
toothed piranhas and parasites that eat you alive from the inside out. Who
wouldn’t want to live there? So here we have Lily Bushwold, a nineteen year old
American girl who may know how to survive in an urban jungle but has never had
to hunt for food, wash clothes in a river, sleep in a spider infested hut or
live off food gathered in the jungle. But when she falls in love with Omar, a
young man from a remote tribe in the Bolivian forest, she will soon experience
a life she could have never dreamed of.
My nineteen-year-old self may have found Lily’s story
terribly romantic and signed up for the trip. But even living in the land of
Oz, were apparently every creature is set to kill you, I could not envisage
surviving long in those conditions – and at my age I prefer my own creature
comforts too much to envy Lily her great adventure. With good reason, as you
will find out when you read this book.
Apart from Lily, the story is brimming with interesting and
eclectic characters, from For God’s Sake, the crippled riverboat driver, to the
“Frannies”, the two missionaries who have settled in the jungle in an effort of
converting the tribes to Christianity. There is also Baya, a shaman living
alone in the bush and shunned by the villagers, who has a strange affinity to
Lily. And because every good adventure story needs some baddies, there are the
poachers, out to rape and pillage and strip the jungle of its treasures. In all
this, Omar and Lily’s love endures.
Yes, there may have been a few scenes that stretched the
boundaries of believability a bit, but never too far to spoil my enjoyment. And
what good adventure tale is not prone to some slight exaggeration? You know
that every good fishing story has a bit of journalistic license thrown in. I
loved the way Ferencik built the tension to the action packed finale, where
Lily really must prove her worth.
Summary:
If you love a good action thriller featuring a plucky female
heroine, then this one should definitely be on your TBR pile. It certainly made
for a great armchair adventure! Apparently Erica Ferencik is planning another
action packed book, this time somewhere “very cold”. Alaska? Antarctica?
Greenland? Wherever, I am certain it will be another fantastic adventure and I
can’t wait to read it!
Read an interview with Erica Ferencik about her latest book here
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